258 – Lots to Learn from this “Gourd-geous” Biz with Ben Bear of Meadowbrooke Gourds

You're listening to gift biz unwrapped episode 258 I don't watch

competitors. It doesn't mean I don't pay attention.

It just means I don't copy.

I might get ideas,

but I don't say,

Oh, look at this place.

I want to be like them.

Attention gifters,

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Here is your host gift biz gal,

Sue moon Heights.

Hi there,

it's Sue.

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The link to go to again is gift biz unwrapped.com

forward slash masterclass now,

today I am so excited to introduce you to my guest.

He's the first to admit his business started kind of as

an accident,

but when you hear the story,

you'll see how all of it fits together.

A perfect storm if you will.

You're also going to hear why it's best not to focus

on your competition,

what to watch for,

to know how people really feel about your product and how

to get customers coming back over and over again.

At the end.

I give Ben a challenge that will play out a little

bit later this year.

Let's jump over to our chat so you can hear all

about it.

Today. I am so excited to introduce you to Ben bear

of Meadowbrook gourds.

Ben has spent the last 30 years helping to start and

grow this company called Meadowbrook Accords.

They now have 20 full time employees dedicated to growing,

designing, crafting,

and marketing.

Gore decor designs.

Each one intended to create smiles and make homes a little

bit warmer.

They sell about half their gourds wholesale to customers located in

every state and the other half are sold online at their

store and through the many classes and community events that they

host at their farm.

Ben attributes his success to many things,

but none more important than consistently trying to be just a

little bit better every year and in every area of the

business. At this point,

Ben is starting to step back and let the next generation

of leaders take them forward.

Ben believes that it will be beyond anything he could have

ever dreamed when he crafted that first.

Gord in his garage many years ago.

Ben, welcome to the gift biz on podcast.

Well, hi Sue.

Thanks for the invitation and I'm excited to do this.

I am so excited to hear your whole story too and

I'm going to tell everybody at some point here how we

got connected.

But before we do so,

I have to do what's become a little bit of a

tradition on the show and that is,

have you described yourself by way of a motivational candle?

So if apart from the bio that I just gave in

the intro,

if we were to get a little glimpse into who you

are, Ben,

what color would a motivational candle be and what would be

a quote or a motto on that candle?

Well, the candle would be gored shape,

surprise, surprise,

Ooh, love that.

For people that don't know what Gord shapes are,

just picture a candy kiss but maybe eight inches in diameter

or something like that.

Color wise it would be green and yellow,

kind of the color of sunflowers,

but also John Deere tractors.

That happens to be one of the things that I enjoy

is really good equipment and that to me is the best

that I can buy.

So that's really secondary to what that thing said,

what that candle says.

And to me,

I learned,

I think it's called a homily or something like that as

a kid,

my father who was a farmer,

kept repeating to me,

well there were six of us kids.

He repeated all of us multiple,

multiple times.

It didn't mean anything to me.

And then I find out later in life I'm doing it.

And what that saying was was good,

better, best,

never let it rest until your good is better and your

better is best still never let it rest.

And to me that is why I can look back and

feel successful is because we started out novices.

We didn't know anything.

We got competent and then we didn't compete with other people.

We just got better at bookkeeping,

advertising, growing marketing,

every step of the business all the time.

What is is great,

but how could you get it a little bit better and

it drives a lot of people,

crazy people that don't like change.

This is changed.

This is a life of change and I love it and

by that I don't watch competitors.

It doesn't mean I don't pay attention.

It just means I don't copy.

I might get ideas,

but I don't say,

Oh look at this place.

I want to be like them.

I simply just want to be better than we were before.

I guess I've written this down because we are going to

talk about competitors.

I think that'll be a great topic to continue with.

And I agree with you there completely about the competitors,

but I want to dive into that again in a little

while. But I think what came to me when you were

talking about the good,

better, best,

and the whole quote there is,

I think there's this fallacy that at some point as a

business owner,

like when you get to a certain revenue number or when

your store is this big or whatever the marker is that

you'll have quote unquote made it,

right? Yeah,

yeah. Right.

But those of us who have done this realize that when

you get there,

you've already put another goal further out for yourself.

And maybe you didn't even realize you'd got there.

You were so focused on just getting better that it's like,

Oh, that's a dream came true and I forgot it was

even dreaming.

Yeah. You ran past that finish line that you had created

for yourself.

Absolutely. Yeah.

Yes. That could be a flaw.

And that says to me,

in a lot of people who are just beginning the business,

enjoy the journey.

Absolutely. Especially when you're just starting out in your imagining and

your dreaming of what your business is going to be.

That unto itself is beautiful to agree and you don't have

all of the challenges that start to pop up as you're

actually doing things every step of the way we should acknowledge,

I guess I'd say If I was to look back and

say, what should I have done better?

Probably that one.

Oh yeah.

Just acknowledging as you go and paying attention to all the

successes. Yeah.

Like appreciating each step more in the moment,

I guess.

Right. Okay.

Well let me share with everybody how I came to find

out about you and I actually knew you before I even

really knew you and let me explain what I mean by

that. So last September I was out doing a trade show

in the area and the woman who works with me at

the shows lives in Hershey,

Pennsylvania, and she picked me up,

we got our booth all set up,

and then she says,

Sue, we're doing something this afternoon.

I know you're going to love it.

It's a surprise.

I'm not telling you where we're going.

And we drove,

I don't know,

an hour,

hour and a half,

something like that where you are from Hershey and we go

down this path and then all of a sudden revealed is

this gorgeous,

huge sunflower field.

And I'm like,

Oh, these are so beautiful though.

And she says,

well just you wait and we pull up to this building.

We go inside the building and then I see all of

the gourds.

And I already knew the gourds,

Ben, because I've been to a number of stores throughout the

country that have your products,

you're wholesaling to them.

One of them is the cupboard in Fort Collins and my

daughter lives in Fort Collins right now and we've had family

lived there for the past like eight,

nine years.

And every time I walk into the store,

especially in the fall,

that's when they're displayed the most.

I'm like,

Oh, I love these gourds,

I love these gourds.

And now this year when I went,

I knew you and I turned it over.

Sure enough,

Meadowbrook Goertz.

Well that's quite a compliment.

Thank you.

And my stepdaughter has a number of them in her house

and I'm like,

I know that.

I'm telling them all about your store.

And then of course the sunflowers and all of that,

and all of you give biz listeners.

If you go onto my Instagram account,

you're going to see pictures of me in the sunflower field.

You're going to see a picture under that tractor that you

have there.

I crawled under there to take a picture of it and

those little gourd cottages.

So your place is beautiful.

So I just wanted to share with everybody.

So that's when I reached out and I'm like,

Oh my gosh,

can we get you guys on the podcast?

And then Ben,

you so graciously agreed to do so.

But I don't know the whole story about how the business

developed. So take us back to your garage.

Tell us what happened and how you got the idea for

all of this.

Well, I think ideas for me are first start out like

a glimpse.

I see something and then let's take the gourds.

Let me back up here and tell it maybe a little

bit from a little earlier.

Okay. I've spent my lifetime on a farm,

but on a vegetable farm where you grow and you must

market every day pretty much the product you sell because it

doesn't store well we weren't growing for the shipping market,

we were growing for the local market.

So if you want to get the best flavor out of

your things,

that's your local market.

Once that's a little bit different maybe than a products that

you can ship States away and still be fresh.

So what I'm trying to say by this is I was

growing dried flowers and fruits and vegetables,

probably 50 to a hundred different things every year.

Each of them ha being very time sensitive and that in

the winter time I didn't have any employees because I didn't

have any work.

So I'm kind of like a one man show.

I'm 25 30 in that age range,

but I'm pretty much,

the only adult on the farm was say 50 75 kids

that I have like kids leading kids,

like my older farm crew would be the kids,

but let's just say that it's like having a classroom of

75 kids that you're trying to get to work and that

lasts from dark to dark from March until October or September.

A picture of that lifestyle of always feeling like you're chasing

your tail.

Like, Oh,

I should be able to get over to this field and

get the weeds out of this crop.

Well, I should be over here and you're constantly chasing your

tail because I was just at that size where I wasn't

enough to hire full time people that were steady,

but yet I was doing okay.

Well I took a trip looking at roadside markets and up

in new England and we're located in Pennsylvania.

I don't remember if you said that or not.

So I went North by four or five States,

whatever, and I saw gourds like just two or three of

these hard shell gourds.

They were shaped like a goose and I had never seen

them before.

So I thought,

well, they would look awesome with pumpkin's.

I'm selling pumpkins in the fall.

I had picked your own pumpkin's and I was shipping down

to DC out to Detroit,

some different places because pumpkin's are shippable.

And along with that I was looking for other products and

I saw these gourds.

I thought,

wow, I've never seen them in my area.

So I bought the gourds and brought them back and promptly

forgot about them for a couple years.

They had their seeds inside and I went,

I don't know when winter,

I guess I didn't have much to do.

I got a mouth.

Well, I'm just going to plant these this year.

So it's like I saw a possibility I bought them intending.

But you know,

being busy and having young kids at home and all that,

I just didn't get around to it.

Well, when I finally did,

so let's say it was two or three years later,

I can't remember exactly.

I started selling them fresh just out of the field and

the places I was selling them to loved them and I

was getting a crazy amount of money for them because I

was the only person to have it.

So then I took them,

we have these Amish co-op type of produce auctions around here

where say 50 a hundred farmers,

they bring their product in and then it's sold to other

wholesalers stores and whatever.

So it just basically pools the Mennonite community and then lets

them distribute further away.

And I took them there cause they were leftovers.

It took me a couple of years till I built up

to where I was growing more than my customers would always

want. I took them there and it only took them a

year till somebody else got the same bright idea,

documented. They bought my gourds,

took the seat out of them and the price was,

you know,

a fifth of what it was originally the next year.

And I didn't feel bad about it but I had some

leftover gourds.

And the part that I haven't stated yet is I have

always been a creative person.

And I've always had a wood shop.

Matter of fact,

the most interesting Christmas gift I ever got,

I was probably about six or seven and I got shopped

tools, drills,

hammer SOLs,

that kind of stuff that people wouldn't give their kids now.

That's what I got for a gift.

And I was originally thinking,

I don't know if I want to be a farmer,

I think I want to be a carpenter or a cabinet

maker. That was my interest.

Farming was my life,

but that was interesting to me.

So with these leftover Gores at about the same time,

I met a really old lady,

she called herself the gourd lady.

Her first name is Ruth and I cannot remember the rest

of it,

but she was crafting them.

She was drying them down and she turning them into what

I thought were really neat things and I thought,

well it might shop at home.

Like first of all,

I have to say I didn't live on the farm.

I lived here.

We have a way of like a farmer will sell off

lots along the road,

so the houses will be on a strip,

maybe 15 or 20 on both sides of the road,

like around his farm.

So it's not a town and it's not a farm.

We're on the edge of other people's farms,

like an acre or something.

So I had a one car garage there,

but inside it I had my shop tools because that was

my hobby and I just decided to try and take these

and make things not knowing that I had the skill to

do it.

I didn't really have tools.

I had shopped tools,

I didn't,

we now have Gord tools,

tools we designed just for our craft.

But regardless,

I made like 10 products and my demo of them was

we had family coming over for Thanksgiving.

I put them on a table and I said,

what do you think?

No, I had taken Kansas spray paint,

my collars were off,

everything, but the style was there.

It was the idea or the concept overall,

Yes. And from that,

their excitement.

I still can't,

I still to this day can't see when I have something

I just create.

But from their excitement I thought,

well I'm also growing dried flowers and I know somebody that's

taking them to these wholesale markets in Philadelphia and I made

it a deal to put some of my gourds,

like 10% of their booth was my gourds.

And then they had dried flowers would say were bought from

me, but they were reselling and by golly that little 10%

of that booth out sold that whole booth.

No kidding.

I could not fill orders and I was like,

Oh my word.

So Ben,

would they gourds like maybe we should describe for everybody what

these gourds actually look like.

So they're all different types of characters.

Like there's ghosts and snowmen and like all different types of

things. And then they're decorated,

they've got eyes carved out sometimes like a hard in the

stomach, all different types of things where you could have lights

coming out and they're all painted as well.

They're beautiful.

Were those initial ones the same?

No. I know they were stuff that I would look at

now and just laugh.

I mean it was a simple bowl,

like a bowl with a handle.

Now what was unique was I was growing blueberries at the

time, so I put blueberry wood handles and I went out

to the fence row and I got rusty wire,

cut it off the fence row,

bend it into a handle shape,

put the piece of wood in the middle of it and

put it on a bowl and gave it a color.

But because nobody had done it,

it was really cool thing on our market.

I mean for the,

in the home decoration market in the early nineties that,

and we started out making snowman.

Very crude just sprayed white or painted white with me.

Nothing anywhere near the quality that we do now.

And from there,

if we went from a one car garage to a half

of a trailer truck,

like on the farm,

I had a drying chamber for the flowers.

So it was heated in the winter time,

but it was basically half a trailer truck.

I built steps up to the side door and that's where

we started crafting gourds.

I started using some of my part time labor that I

had available in the summertime.

Some of them were still available in the winter time.

I had them come help and we started painting in our

greenhouse and we started shipping out of the crudest pole building

you ever saw.

So it had poles that held up the roof and it

had a flat roof on the top and that was it.

So we wrapped it with plastic,

like greenhouse plastic.

I'm telling you,

this was not fancy,

but what I could see was,

Hey, I grew this gourd and I picked it and I

have years till I have to get it to market.

And that's what I love.

It took that crazy,

always feeling behind to,

Hey, this is manageable.

If I don't make this gourd this week or this year,

I can make it next.

And I've crafted gorgeous 20 years old and you can't tell

the difference.

They last that long,

Although last hundreds of years in your house outside,

maybe as a bird house,

maybe eight or 10 years,

but inside it's just like wood.

It's like wood with an organic shape that you grow in

nature. I'm sure your listeners a fair amount of,

don't exactly know what a gourd is or I would think

they might not.

Yeah. The other thing is it filled in an empty space

in your annual cycle where you really weren't producing anything.

Yes. It wouldn't have been possible to start something like that

in the summertime.

There were no extra resources.

So yes,

because I was a seasonal business and the off season I

had time to play.

Right, so you're the first person doing it until someone else

tried to start mimicking what you were doing.

No, that's not fair.

Okay. Correct me.

It's very small in your home crafting business with just a

couple people that had gone commercial with it.

So people have played with this for probably hundreds of years

and in other cultures for thousands of years,

but nobody brought it to market in a wholesale way.

They might sell a few things at a craft show here,

a few things there,

but they just weren't doing it to what I would think

would be an efficient scale.

Okay. All right.

But then so then based on that,

so still a very unique product that isn't really readily available.

Let me just go with that.

Absolutely. How do you decide how to price it?

Well, I mean it's like just a stab in the dark

cause you have nothing to go after In the beginning.

You're selling directly to your customers.

I mean you or some of your people are,

they're actually selling it to that wholesale customer.

You can watch reactions and we honestly,

we had people fight.

We were probably too cheap because we just get mobbed.

Our guy couldn't even bring product in from the truck without

getting my gets stuck out in a truck selling off his

truck. At one of these shows,

we simply had something that most people hadn't seen before.

Number one question is what's a gourd?

And we'd explain it to them.

It was organic and it's not that it's organically grown,

but it's an organic product.

And it just fascinated piano guests the way we styled them.

It's accidental.

Well, it's accidental.

If you watch people's smiles,

it's accidental.

You can create and not even know.

Or I can create a not even know I have a

yes or a no,

but when I show it to somebody,

if I watch their eyes,

cause most people I think like to lie to you or

not lie,

I don't mean lied.

They're being kind to you.

You want the reaction without any kindness.

That's the most helpful one is,

Yeah, people who have no vested interest in your reaction really

Well. Or what I found is I had to find people

like I could create,

but I had to find people that could tell me what

I created was good or bad and my wife happens to

be one of them.

And it was as simple as I'd laugh about it.

I'd take my things home.

This is when we got a little bit bigger and a

buy shop wasn't in my garage.

I take it home and I just sit it on the

counter because I know my wife would try to make me

feel good and not as bad as some people maybe,

but I still didn't completely trust her not to tell me.

That was nice.

I wanted to know if she really liked it,

so I put it on the counter and if she really

liked it,

she'd keep it in the house and if she didn't,

she'd ask me like,

are you going to take that?

And that's how it was.

As simple as that.

If it was good enough,

she wanted it,

then I had something because she had her choice of everything

we made and decide,

all right,

if I have it good enough that she likes,

and I think we both chuckled about that over the years.

I don't do that anymore.

That lasted for probably about 15 years now.

My daughter is the one that,

we have a little team here,

but she probably is the most vocal one of them.

She decides whether it's good or not.

She's the one who's making the final choice there.

Yes. So you took just a guess at the pricing and

then adjusted along the way.

You probably when your trucks were being totally sold out,

before you even got into the event,

you probably figured at that point you needed to raise your

prices. That was one indicator.

Yes, yes.

And then did you just kind of keep adjusting till you

settled in on the right prices along the way or how

did that work?

Well, it's still to this day,

that's one of the more challenging things is how do you

price something where it doesn't have a market price.

And we use a combination of a mathematical formula like we

know down to a couple seconds how long it takes us

to make each gourd.

And that might pass through 20 people's hands.

But we have each step timed and we pay according to

time. So that's how our employees are paid.

So we have a good clear labor cost.

We have farm costs,

we have material costs are easy that the big one is

the overhead,

how you allocate overhead.

And that's just,

I mean we have a whole farm,

multiple bill or you sell it a lot of things here,

but they all cost money.

But there's a little piece of that cost in each one

of those gourds as overhead.

And that is kind of the trickier one.

But we still watch our customers.

If something isn't selling,

we pay attention and we replace about 30% of our products

every year with something new.

And we would love our customers to be honest with us

and tell us when we're too expensive.

Cause really we don't know if something doesn't sell.

It could be multiple reasons,

but one of them could be price and we don't know

that unless we can get that information from either our retail

customers or our wholesale customers.

And that's,

as you know,

that's not an easy thing to do.

No, because most people are going to say that it's too

pricey so that the price will go down Well or they

like you and they'll say,

Oh, that's fine.

Again, what you want is what was their first thought they

had not what was the coach thought,

Right. Yeah.

What was that first thought?

It's a challenge.

It remains a challenge.

I think over the years we've been too low priced.

We've been too high priced and I won't say what I

think we are now.

I'm not sure.

That's always something we keep our eye on.

Yeah. My perspective is they're not cheap for sure.

And I say it in both ways in the cost to

obtain an item but also in the quality of the artwork

and the design and the style and all of that.

But when I went into your shop,

I mean there was something for everybody at price points,

right? Cause at that point you were already promoting Halloween,

Thanksgiving and Christmas ornaments even.

And those were totally reasonable.

And then of course the big things that I was looking

at expensive cause I'm going for all the big stuff.

Right? But I think it's very reassuring for our listeners to

hear that it's kind of a delicate dance,

this pricing thing,

you have a little bit of more of a challenge cause

you're also growing your product.

You're not obtaining the gourd so you have more elements to

your cost.

But I think,

like I said,

it's comforting to now.

So let's move on to when you started going into wholesale.

That truck incident I told you was wholesale.

We actually started a hundred percent wholesale for the first probably

eight years.

We didn't sell.

Okay. We would test retail,

a local craft show,

we would test new ideas,

but we saw the market at that time as either you're

in it wholesale or you're in it retail.

Because if you're in retail and you're selling,

like if we go to a craft show,

but it would be in a territory of one of our

customers or close to one of our customers,

we felt we would offend them.

Right. You're competing with yourself and then your customer.

Right. So we intentionally stayed wholesale and the other reason for

wholesale was you saw where we're located at now,

what you don't see is the road you drove in was

a dirt road 20 years ago and front.

Every time a car went by our buildings,

the front of the building,

it's just got dusted out and it just wasn't very hospitable

to retail.

We're way out here in the country.

Everybody that comes here,

they intended to get here in all these years.

I've only talked to one customer said I was driving by

and stopped in just one customer in 20 years said I

was driving by.

I said,

I've never heard that.

I don't think you would be around the case.

No, I actually forget what the original point was when I

was telling that story.

I was asking you about wholesale and so you were sharing

that. You did that pretty much from the start.

Yes. We were 100% wholesale and I liked that model for

starting a business.

Now we have multiple streams of income,

but in the beginning when you don't know how to craft

gourds, you don't know how to grow gourds.

You don't know this business,

you don't know the craft beers and you don't know anything.

It's much easier to do just one thing.

Just focus on wholesale.

Don't try to do online,

don't, well,

there wasn't even an online now,

but don't try to do everything.

Focus on one and that got us off to a good

start I think.

And it sounds like the attraction of the gourd made it

pretty easy to get into stores.

Well, here's the thing.

I'm don't think I'm a very good marketer or a very

good salesperson.

That's just not my gift and I think my gift is

to make products that sell themselves.

I think I was always focused that way because I did

not want to be out trying to sell them.

I wanted to be creating them.

We'll hear how Ben managed through this selling problem right after

a quick break.

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so who do you have selling?

I would have always had,

this is crazy,

this is how hot it was in the beginning.

We put our name and our phone number on our tag.

We went to one or two crash shows,

maybe one or two in the very beginning and we just

left word of mouth go around the craft shops because they

were competitors,

one craft shop to another,

whatever. And so they were going out and looking at craft

shops that they admired or they saw in and they'd see

these gourds,

Hey, turn a tag over and there was her phone number

they call us.

So our marketing was sitting there waiting for the phone to

ring and I got to be a pretty busy job.

That was the gold rush of the gourds when they sold

themselves. Not probable today,

I'm guessing unless you have an extremely unique product that comes

out again.

Yes, and I feel so fortunate I didn't earn this,

that nobody did this with gourds.

I mean it was just like a lucky break.

It was a lucky break.

But you recognized it and you took it like how many

opportunities are around all of us all the time and we

don't recognize it as a possibility.

Yes, that's true.

I think I just got an extra easy one for my

gifts. I just got something handed to me so I feel,

I want to just say it was meant to be because

as you talk about growing up on the farm and then

getting that tool kit and that you enjoyed all that craftsmanship

type, you merged the two together and look at where you

are today.

Absolutely, yep.

This is like what you were meant to do because it

just like it's so streamlined I would say.

So. At what point did you start adding employees as you're

starting to see things grow?

Tell us how the growth of the business happened.

When I start a new venture,

I do not invest heavily.

I find tests.

I find a an efficient way of finding out whether my

assumptions are right or wrong.

It's just the way I am.

It's a protective thing from getting overextended into crazy ideas because

creative people have good ideas and crazy ideas and I am

not sure whether my ideas are crazy or good,

so I test them well.

I would have done the same thing starting this business.

I would have hired people that I already knew that weren't

currently working as needed basis.

And then as things became more and more stable like the

second or third year you realize well you're not a one

time wonder and you can start to see well this thing

could be so much bigger than what I'm doing now.

It could be endless.

At first you're like,

well I run out ideas like I put out these 10

gourds that people like.

Well at the time that's the only 10 ideas for gourds

I had and I didn't know if the next time I

sat down to do it if I could come up with

11 well once you realize that ideas are endless cause I

didn't, I mean I'm a farmer.

I didn't go to school for it,

I didn't have a mentor or any of that.

I just had to learn about myself at the same time

that I'm making a life.

That's kind of how we started with employees is the more

stable we got or the more stable I could see the

future, the more I was willing to invest in employees.

And in like the third year we had five full time

employees. I mean by that time I had said,

look, I think we can do this.

And I think this looks a lot easier than what I've

been doing.

I actually struggled for quite a while being six months going

back and forth,

am I going to be in this business?

And just myself,

because I had the stress of all those kids in the

summertime. I was always chasing my tail and I thought,

well, I have all the gifts I need.

I don't need to have employees.

I can make a living.

I think I can make a living for maybe the rest

of my life with my own hands on a smaller scale,

safer and all that.

And I'm glad that I chose to have employees because what

that allowed me to do is now I get to do

the jobs that I want to do.

I don't have to do everything.

And in the end,

that made a huge difference.

So we it up.

As business came in,

we geared up and let's say in three years we had

five people.

In 10 years we had 15 people and then as growth

slowed down,

we were probably up to 20 now plus part time.

We still hire school aged kids to harvest the Gores to

pollinate. So we have an additional 10 or 15 part time

employees. And those seasonal periods when we harvest or pollinate.

At what point did the vegetables go down?

Well, as the gourd business picked up,

whichever vegetable caused me the most frustration and I liked to

least left.

So in about five years I was only growing sweet corn

and the only reason I was growing sweet corn is because

at that particular time of the summer I wasn't particularly busy

and the gourd business and I had young kids and I

wanted them to have something to do on the farm and

people love my sweet corn.

So I guess maybe it was partly for that Pat on

the back.

It was the last thing to go,

but that trailed on maybe three or four years more.

So you wound down the vegetables and then you wound up

the gourds and then where did the idea come to turn

the building?

To us.

This is our home,

that people come here,

they do pilgrimages here a,

they get the tours and once people get a tour they

can actually watch our guys wash them,

cut them,

color them and accessorize them.

Oh, I didn't know about this.

Okay, talk about that more.

Well, it's every Tuesday we give a free tour Tuesdays at

two, which is today and one took off here before I

sat down.

And then over the holidays when families bring people in from

all over the country,

we open up every day of the week then and we

do group tours.

You know,

if you have 15 or more people,

we'll book you a group tour.

So this is our home base.

We have a store,

but the big thing people come here is for the experience.

They get to see that we're real,

they get to see how we do it.

And the number one thing they say when they come out

of watching how we do it,

it's like,

Oh, I get it.

Your gourds aren't expensive anymore.

Interesting. I see what they did.

And that's kind of what we fight.

And from a marketing perspective,

the customer,

the wholesale customers are that can tell our story the best,

do the best.

Or some of them take our tags off,

tell a different story.

It's authentic,

but they just don't use our name.

And in those cases,

our product sells well.

It doesn't sell well if it isn't connected to its history.

Interesting. So here we connect the history.

Yeah, this is kind of a side note,

but I'm just thinking to all of you guys who are

listening and you know we're always talking about now Facebook and

video and all of that and behind the scenes showing how

your product is made.

This is a great example of the more you're willing to

open up your behind the shop and show the intricacies of

development of your product,

the more value the customer feels about the product.

Like I'm guessing now,

Ben, this will be an interesting question circling back because I

also know in your home you have Gorge for sale so

people can do their own as well.

Well, we recognized maybe 10 years ago that people,

probably 15 years.

That's the way time flies that people wanted to participate in

that process.

Like yeah,

they were buying gourds,

but they also had ideas of things that we didn't make

and we started opening up.

We call them create your own where we would put raw

gourds out and we put our crafters there because the big

missing link,

if you want to craft a gourd yourself,

how do you cut the thing?

It's wood,

it's round,

it's like wood and it's round and if you want to

cut intricate designs in there,

there's a few cheap Gord Sauls out there that don't work

very well and they're expensive so it's very difficult.

You're going to cut one,

Gord, you're into $150 the gourd might cost you $5 and

the salt costs you 145 so if you want to try

this, it's too expensive to get into.

We started doing that and that has just,

I mean it has taken off.

We also studied our customers and realize that you have to

give people more than just a gourd and advice and somebody

there to cut.

Like they would draw the line and our guys would cut

it. So we started doing with pre cut kind of like

kit type things where you could stack it together and do

your own painting and your own accessorizing.

And that has just gone crazy because now it isn't the

5% of the people that I'd say artistic,

it's those 5% are fine.

They're happy too.

But the other 95% that thought they couldn't do it realize

they can,

Oh my word.

It looks almost as good as our stuff.

So once you get a lot of customers and all that

excitement like,

Hey, I made something and my wife has gone to the

paint night things where you drink a little wine and you

paint, none of that stuff is hanging up in her house.

She went for the experience.

You thought it was okay,

but it's somewhere in a basement buried in and a container

where people that leave are create your own here.

I know they're giving us gifts or they're going to display,

they're that happy about it.

And that was the key to the create your own.

So it's not just the experience then,

but it's also that the product is really good,

but you're also lucky because people can't as easily replicate that

by themselves at their home.

They can do it when they're with you.

Oh, that's what I was telling.

I feel lucky about a lot of this.

It was not fair.

You'll own it.

It's okay.

It's these little,

what would I call them,

pinch points that keep other people from doing this that is

actually worked in our benefit and that would be one of

them. Not everybody has an extra $150 to try something that

they don't think they can probably do anyhow.

Well, and if there's more than that to the experience,

right? Like tell us more over and above the gourds what

you're able to do on your property.

Let me first of all,

create a little bit better picture of those.

Create your own events.

Okay. We actually clean out or when I say clean out,

we reorganize our,

the actual area that we do our production in our finishing

room, our crafting room and our assembly room.

We strip it all out and we bring tables and chairs

and we see about 125 customers at a time in three

different rooms and they are there with all of our craftspeople.

So that one on one experience,

they're getting to know us and we have really nice people

that work here.

I don't know,

maybe everybody says that,

but they really are.

And so that interaction,

it just,

that whole family type of feel is what they get when

they're doing create your own.

They have all the help they want and it's just such

a, I guess maybe I sound like I'm bragging.

I don't mean to,

You should,

at your business you should be bragging.

It's, they're just a special bond develops between our regular customers

that do that.

Every event.

I mean we'll have some people,

I don't know where they could put any more gourds,

but they keep coming and I think a lot of it

is the connection with our employees.

They're meaningful,

full connections.

So what else can you do on our farm?

We, you said in your introduction to sunflowers,

the sunflowers were an accident.

They were planted as a cover crop and I had a

retail customer and I don't work in a store,

but they would have asked the store manager and she would

have called me and said,

Hey, one of my customers saw you have sunflowers out there.

They would like to know if they could go pick them.

And for a cover crop,

really what I care about is the organic matter,

the roots,

and there's something growing in the ground.

A flower isn't so important to me,

so I said,

sure, let them go pick.

And they has such a good time and other people started

asking, now this is just a small field compared to what

you saw.

I thought,

well if people like that,

it doesn't really cost me anything.

Why don't I just do it and give them away.

I can tell you that I did it for multiple reasons,

but probably the number one was just to be kind.

Our store sales quadrupled.

Sunflower season came in No way.

Yes. And now an intentional thing,

it's still free.

But now I see the business benefit.

Like it started out just being nice and it's like,

wait a minute,

that doesn't cost me very much and that makes people smile

and then they go tell other people and they come out

and they're smiling too.

And then they'll come in the store to thank us and

the way they like to thank us is not everybody for

sure, but they'll think of us at Christmas time or whatever

and Hey,

I'm going to go support the people that made this possible.

So that's the way it started.

And it currently we grow about 80 acres of sunflowers.

They start in the beginning of September and they run until

frost about the middle of October.

So we put out multiple plannings.

We do sunflower tours with that tractor and trolley that you,

I think you said you took a picture of.

Yep. I crawled underneath,

just to be dramatic.

My daughter bought a 15 acre farm right beside ours and

she put a little pick your own pumpkin patch and a

corn maze and we put the Baltic color.

I don't know if you saw them when you were out

here, but instead of just being yellow and Brown and green,

they are all different fall colors,

oranges and mahogany and that kind of stuff pretty.

I didn't see that.

We put the expensive,

a smaller patch,

we put that down by her place,

so that's pretty much,

and we have an upsale at that time of the year,

oops, is we have what I would call really high quality

standards here.

Like I can't even tell when something gets rejected.

Exactly what it got rejected for 50% of the time.

Maybe because we're selling wholesale has to be predictable.

What it looks like to our customer and gourds aren't all

uniform. I mean they're like,

it's not working with like something that came out of a

mode. It's like everyone is slightly different.

So it means maybe we have 2% error rate out of

all the gourds we make.

Well we saved them and we hold a sale called ups

and the word ups came from,

oops, I made a mistake.

So we call it an upsale and we have food trucks

and bands come out and play and we just turn it

into a large social occasion for this area mean we're just,

it's still really growing.

There's really not anybody else doing that.

There's other people selling sunflowers,

but there isn't anybody that's just giving them away and letting

people pick pictures and traipse over a hundred acres of the

farm. And we may be someday can't do it either from

a liability issue.

But so far we've been in it about 15 years and

customers besides some people that you wouldn't think stealing thing,

driving up in a Mercedes Benz and pocketing some of your

gourds and your pumpkins from the fields.

No way.

Other than we haven't had much issue.

So it's just,

it's like we opened up the farm to people within bounds.

Like we have our roads blocked off where we don't want

people to go.

But by and large you can come out here and can

get a picture with your family and friends.

I don't know how many people we've had get engaged out

here, do their wedding shots,

but the fields are so vast that you can find that

little niche and you're like with other people.

But you're also private because you saw the size of the

field. It's so big for sure.

Yeah. Amazes me cause I live this life,

but it amazes me how little a lot of people get

to see of the outdoors and the fields and the sun.

Well, it's true and it,

you know,

it combining so many things because you've got the nature outside.

The sunflowers are so colorful and then you have the experience.

I didn't know that the tractor actually moved.

So you've got the rides,

you've got the events that you put on all of that,

and then you go inside,

you've got the Gorge,

you've got the experience of being able to make your own.

So there's just so much to do.

I mean,

you could easily spend almost a full day there if you

really want to.

Yes, you could.

Most of our customers,

like I said,

it's a bit of a pilgrimage for them and they don't

come for just a half an hour.

That's what they want.

They drove two hours,

so then they want a couple of hours at least of

entertainment, so to speak.

It was impossible for me to decide which gourds I was

buying. I think literally I was there for an hour deciding,

putting things back on the shelf,

putting things back in.

Does this go with this?

How will this vignette work at my house,

back and forth?

Do I want to get Thanksgiving ones or Christmas ones?

Oh, but then there's also Easter,

like all that was crazy.

So well listen,

Ben, we'll do our listeners a disservice if we don't swing

back and talk a little bit about how you feel about

the competition and the role that it plays.

You alluded to it in the beginning.

I wanted to stop you because I wanted to dive into

it a little bit deeper after everybody knew a little bit

more about you and your business,

but you'd mentioned that you don't totally look at your competition,

but you peek at them from time to time might be,

at least the way I got it.

So will you expand on that a little bit?

Well, I think with your competition you have to be aware

of where they're at.

You can't do this blind like,

so what I'm saying is we did not follow anybody.

We made our own path and then we began competing against

ourselves. So we're not trying to be like somebody else or

better than somebody else.

That was the point that I was making.

For us it was probably the easiest because there wasn't a

lot of competition,

but it was just funny.

You realize you might not have seen a competitor in two

or three years and you realize,

Oh, I'm inward focused,

meaning I care more about how I've improved as opposed to

what my competitors might be doing.

That was what I guess I was trying to say there.

And what do you look at for improvement?

How do you judge if you're making the right improvements?

Is it all monetary?

No. Huh?

Because to me monetary,

I see business as a game and money tells you what

happened in the past is you come back and you look

at your dollar figures for the year.

That tells you what happened in the past.

And it's a good indicator.

I mean,

don't get me wrong,

I believe in watching the numbers,

but a smile tells you what's happening right now.

If your numbers were real good,

but your customers weren't excited,

well that just means they were excited to come see you.

But will they come next year or next seat or whatever.

So I actually watch smiles.

I try to watch people's enjoyment and also watch the numbers.

But to me the numbers show you something delayed.

No, I think you're right.

I like how you said this number.

Show what was,

and the smiles tell you what will continue because nobody says

that you're going to repeat those numbers if you are not

giving the same quality product satisfaction,

any of that.

Well, see,

I believe somebody will still buy from us.

If they drove two hours to come here,

they're going to buy from us.

But if they weren't excited enough,

they're not going to drive two hours next year.

Ben goes on to share an experience he had that was

in complete contrast with the experience customers have in Meadowbrook farms.

They made Teddy bears and they went absolutely huge into a

billion dollar company.

Their barn was located about an hour away from here out.

I mean it was massive.

It's a billion dollar company.

You walk in there and it floored you.

That's awesome.

But something seemed a little bit off to me at the

time too.

I went back three years later.

It was just as awesome,

but it was just the same and I never went back

again. And we actually,

they became a customer of ours.

Uh, and I think in Nan they wound up owing us

money cause they went bankrupt.

That was the end result was they wowed you with size

and with a Gran kind of like a Disney world,

but they didn't build on that somehow.

Now what I'm actually trying to say is you can be

really good,

but if you aren't different and better the next time you

eventually lose that customer.

Anyhow, in the craft market,

I think people really want,

they want to be a little surprised every time they come

to your store or see your product,

they want to see something they haven't seen before.

So how are you doing that?

30% of our products are new every year.

Okay, so new designs.

Yes. New experiences like that trolley you saw wasn't there two

years ago.

Those cottages weren't there a year ago.

Sunflowers were only 10 acres or five acres,

three years.

It's that there weren't pick your own pumpkin so there wasn't

a corn maze.

All those things.

It's just like I think to keep people's attention you need

to keep offering them a little something unexpected so that they're

thrilled every time they come.

Okay. So I have a challenge for you.

How close are to Lancaster?

Okay, so if I come to you in September,

am I going to see something new?

Absolutely. If you don't,

I'll fire myself.

All right.

I'm coming next September cause I'm going to be in the

area and that'll be a perfect cause.

It'll be a year from when I was there before.

Sounds like a challenge.

Yes. That'll be fun.

As you're looking into the future,

I know you're saying that you're kind of stepping back and

it's a family run business,

so you're letting the other generations kind of pick up,

which is so exciting,

I'm sure for you to watch it continue.

But what do you see for yourself?

What are the upcoming years hold for you?

Well, I struggled with this question because it's kind of like

I'm looking back on a life that a lot of dreams

came true and I don't at this time have major dreams.

I did not know that all of my kids would want

to be in this business and take it over.

So it's like dreams plus dreams.

I didn't even dream.

I just want to help them and our employees.

We're about half family here and about half friends that work

together. I just want to see that this remained successful for

them and I actually think that I'm looking for some way

to serve one of the podcasters that I listened to said,

when you don't know what you're going to do next,

go do something for somebody else until you figure it out

because you're going to be happy either way.

Okay. I think I liked that.

Yeah, I like that too.

I will design gourds.

I must create something and I'm hoping to build a whole

village of those little cottages that you saw.

That would be cool.

Yeah, That could keep me busy for five,

10 years or so.

Well, see,

I just,

I want to stay active.

I want to stay creative and I want to stay involved,

but I am glad not to make all the financial decisions,

the business decisions.

I like just to play,

so I'll be playing in this business for as long as

I can.

Beautiful. I love that and that's a perfect way for us

to end as I'm just listening to all of this.

I'm know you realize what a lucky guy you are.

There's this whole thing,

it's like a magical equation that just got built based around

things that you love to do.

Thank you so much for sharing today.

I really appreciate it.

I can't wait to come back.

I'm so excited.

I'll forget all about the challenge,

but I was still winning.

I bet you,

I bet you will,

but I'm going to check it out for sure.

All right.

One might have your name on it.

Oh, that would be cool.

Well, Ben,

once again,

thank you so much for being with me today.

You're very welcome.

I've enjoyed it very much So.

Seriously. Doesn't bend sound like just the nicest guy.

I love how much passion he has for his business even

after all these years and how much he cares and speak

so highly of his employees.

Meadowbrook. Gord sounds like the best place to work and knowing

that it's being down to the next generation.

It just continues to add to the richness of the business.

I'm already thinking about what I'm behind when I go back

there next September.

I'll cover it all in my Instagram stories.

Of course at gift biz unwrapped and have photos of my

visit and evidence of Ben's winning my challenge because we all

know that he will.

Let's face it,

we talked in the beginning of this episode about Ben's business

starting somewhat by accident.

Up next week is another family business that discovered a significant

product extension also by in a way an accident.

It just goes to show you that opportunities are all around

us when we watch for them.

I'll fill you in on all the details when we get

together again next week.

See you then.

Oh, and one more thing.

I'm not even gonna roll an outro here for this episode

because if you haven't already,

I want you to take the time right now to go

register for my masterclass.

Remember it's at gift biz,

unwrapped.com forward slash masterclass.

Couldn't be any easier,