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February 1, 2024
Dear Friend,
It has certainly been a year of learning. Curt does all of the hard work of the manual labor on the farm. I (Jill) have been in charge of our "marketing." I am a nurse practitioner by trade. I assure you that my Advanced Pathophysilogy courses did not help in this line of buinsess. Maybe my Graduate Statistic Course should help, but I'm not really feeling the benifits of that course either. Though I feel my career has been a blessing and I truly felt called into that profession, it sure is stressfull!! Balancing being a wife, mom, housekeeper, cook, homework helper, Taxi service, Neelyville Tiger Suporter, School Board Member, nurse practitioner, and now director of marketing hasn't been easy. Guess how much per hour I get paid to write newsletters? ZERO. Guess how much I get paid to make Facebook posts? ZERO. But when I say ZERO I mean dollars. I truly love what we are doing here on the farm and my husbands passion has become MY passion. Our goal is for me to retire and have a full time place here on the farm. But until then, I will sandwich my McGruder HomeGrown hours into spare moments of my day.
Things nursing school did NOT prepare me for:
1. How important it is to keep up with technology? I mean, I read medical journals at least weekly which I'm sure my patients appreciate a practitioner who believes in evidence-based-practice but if I had my choice, I'd still be carrying my bag phone that Curt bought me in 1994. You may think I am joking, but just ask Misty Gibbs how big of a deal it was when I went from my flip phone to my first iphone. My point is, technology is HARD! Just when you finally get something figured out... BAM comes and update and we have to figure it out all over again. And all of this is to "make our lives easier."
2. No one told me you can't mass email through a gmail account. After spending weeks on creating a newsletter, it took me another few weeks to figure out how to get a domain and a buisiness email that was not through a free service. I have also learned that it is actually illegal to send mass emails through these "free" services so at least I didn't make that mistake.
3. Mailchimp can be your best friend or bring you to tears. This is the service I use to send our our emails. I cannot count the hours I have spent trying to figure this service out and each month I still have to google a tutorial on how to restart the process all over again (yes, I may be a slow learner). It's getting a little eaiser but I still have a LOT to learn and you may see some different formats in the near future.
4. Facebook has more features than I ever imagined. The more we do, the more traffic we get, the more features are "unlocked". It's pretty cool but at the same time, my brain can't always hadle those additional features. For those of you who think I'm up posting at 5 am every morning.... I schedule those posts. However, I usually am up around 4:30 and see when it posts anyway but my brain didn't have to do the work that early.
5. Taking on this buisness means that I now monitor my own Facebook page and Messanger account, McGruder HomeGrown Facebook Page, McGruder HomeGrown Messanger, my personal email, my VA/work email, and now a new email for our farm business. I had actually forgotten about the buisness email until today and found a few customer emails from a few weeks ago in there. So, I appreciate the grace given to this adult learner.
6. It's important to know how to convert a Word document into a PDF file. Such a simple click but if you don't know how, it's a struggle that takes way too much time.
7. How to resize a photograph. I had no idea this was even a thing. Our webpage requires all photographs to be resized. After several hours and admittadly a few tears, Curt figured that one out for me. I about pulled all my hair out and he was dealing with a very tired and cranky wife.
8. Building a Webpage. Yes... I did that. Well, I did that with the help from Eat From Farms. BUT it was still HOURS of work to figure it out. This is one step I'm finally comfortable with. I can navigate it easily now and feel very comfortable and pleased with this service.
9. Setting up an online store. WOW! That was huge. It was a big guessing game as to the demand. We will likely not offer our produce online but will offer our photography services online as these are not limited. When I would put 100 gallons on strawberrys in the online store, they would be GONE within 45 minutes. It was truly CRAZY. But let me tell 'ya, it's a very GOOD kind of crazy.
10. How to write a newsletter. How could I leave that out? Formatting, changing pictures, arranging text blocks, making it eye appealing are things I had never done before. My biggest word adventures was in writing a resume and it had been years since I had done that. I've been a scrapbooker for many years and have felt the same feelings when creating my scrapbooks. I pour a big part of myself into those newsletters and I do hope you enjoy them. Your enjoyment is how I get paid.
11. At then end of the day, we just want to keep you engaged and informed at all that we are doing here at McGruder HomeGrown, LLC. Our mission is to serve our community and bring something of value to our new found friends.
So the moral of today's blog is this: even if it's hard, still try. If it's your passion and you don't get paid for it, maybe one day you will. It's a good thing to step outside of your comfort zone. None of us grow within the walls of that "comfort zone."
Many Blessings to You and Your Family!
McGruder HomeGrown, LLC 🍓