Real People, Real Results - Kendall Ballantine

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In this bonus session of The Effortless Success Intensive, I sit down with Kendall Ballantine, the workhorse behind Online Marketing for Farmers, The Workhorse Podcast, and Central Park Farms. Kendall shares how she built a thriving online business alongside an intense farm operation, balancing direct-to-consumer agriculture, a retail store, and a growing coaching business—all while navigating family responsibilities and major time constraints.

We dive deep into:
✅ How Kendall transformed her online business to work with her packed schedule
✅ The power of AI in streamlining marketing, content creation, and coaching
✅ Why she ditched unsustainable offers, raised her prices, and restructured her programs
✅ The impact of Ready Set Scale on her business, including a $1,970 sale from ONE Instagram post
✅ How AI tools allowed her to scale without increasing her workload

If you’ve ever felt like you don’t have enough time to grow your online business, this episode will open your eyes to how smart systems, AI, and streamlined offers can create more revenue with less stress.

🚀 Want to scale like Kendall? Check out Ready Set Scale HERE

Transcript

Okay. well, welcome, Kendall. I'm so excited to have you here today. Everybody, Kendall is the owner, founder, CEO of online marketing for farmers and also a seven-acre actual farming operation here in beautiful British Columbia.

And Kendall is also a repeat customer of ours, someone that's taken quite a few of our programs and smaller products.

And she has just been so successful in implementing them and putting the trainings that we provide to the most incredible use.

And it's so fun to watch her. So, I thought that I would have her on today to chat a little bit about what she's been doing in her business, what has been working for her and what she's kind of taken away from the workshops and the programs that she has taken and how she's put them into

action in her business because it's been really exciting to watch all of that roll out. So welcome Kendall, if you want to start by just introducing yourself to everybody in case somebody doesn't know you or know of you.

@2:09 - Kendall Ballantine (onlinemarketingforfarmers.com)

Yeah, thank you so much for inviting me on when you sent me a message and you're like, can you find time?

I know your schedule is busy. I was like, you have helped me make so much money in my business and streamlined things so much that I will of course find time in my schedule to come and chat with you.

So yeah, you did a great job of introducing me. We have been running the farm now for 10 years.

Marketing for farmers has come out in 2020. So that has been a big adjustment. And once I launched the online space of our business, the marketing for farmers end of things, I really realized quite quickly that I was going to need to make some pretty significant changes to the way I operate because the farm is such a beast, it's such a time commitment.

But I am a really big advocate for making sure that we have some diversified revenue streams and I really wanted to make sure I mean me and my husband are in the best point in our our relationship that we've ever been.

But I do really believe that women need to of some of that financial security individually, and with a farm-based business, much of what we do on the farm is dependent on everyone in my family working together.

And so I kind of branched off and did that as a little bit of a safeguard and a way to give back to the community, a way to support other farmers, but it was quite shocking very quickly and quite noticeable that I needed to figure out some of those back-end streamline ways that we could show up well, but show up in a way that still fit into my busy work schedule, which is where you came in to play and why I keep kind of getting more programs with you because it has been such a big difference in how we operate.

@3:40 - Melissa Rodgers (Self)

So just for people's context, I mean, I know even if you've never worked on a farm in your life, I am absolutely not a farm girl, but I used to manage a horse barn when I was a teenager.

So I'd catch the bus to the barn after high school and I would do the evening routine. I remember how much work that was for about, I think it was, 15.

courses and you have a whole operation. So can you tell us a little bit about that and what the time and labor demand looks like for you?

@4:07 - Kendall Ballantine (onlinemarketingforfarmers.com)

Yeah, so when I started Central Park Farms, it was just me and then my husband got more involved with it.

We now are a full operation. We raised chicken pork and beef direct to consumer. We have a butcher shop on site.

We do all of our own cotton wrap. We have a retail store. We have an online store that does weekly home delivery three days a week.

So we are now a team of 10. We are over a million dollars annual revenue year. It is a seven day a week job.

We are all hands on deck. So it's a it's a piece because we sell everything direct to consumer. Every single cut of meat goes out by us packing order or having somebody buy it at retail say we're not like third party sending it out to a feedlot or anything.

@4:48 - Melissa Rodgers (Self)

the boundary area, right? Like it's quite a significant distance away from the actual farm operation in like in the Fraser Valley.

@4:55 - Kendall Ballantine (onlinemarketingforfarmers.com)

So we have part of our livestocker in the Fraser Valley. So our pork and our chicken and our beef through the winter or in the Fraser Valley and then we range them in the boundary in Rock Creek where our ranch is.

So it's about five and a half hours away. Jay and I, my husband and I, we travel back and forth between the boundary region and the Fraser Valley every week almost.

So that is also another, you know, pretty big time constraint.

@5:18 - Melissa Rodgers (Self)

We try to make it like our date night.

@5:19 - Kendall Ballantine (onlinemarketingforfarmers.com)

We drive at night time and you know, stop and pick up yummy food on the way and kind of that reconnect because if we're going to be sitting, I know people always get crazy about it.

They're like, you drive so much. And I was like, I used to commute to an office an hour and 15 minutes each way stuck in traffic.

That's a traffic drive where you're. Yeah. And I'm with my husband. It's fun. Like it was, it beats the heck out of being stuck in traffic.

@5:39 - Melissa Rodgers (Self)

Yeah. But that has its own challenges too. And for those of you that don't know, Kendall and I live in the same kind of general area, we actually have never, I think we might have had him first and once once I think.

But we, like we met online, like we're, you know, we're an online connection. We just happen to be in the same geographic area, but where we live, there's not much of a wind.

Here where kindles main operation is but where she's talking about Ranging her cattle in the summer is absolutely a full-blown Canadian winter And then in the summer we actually are one of the worst areas in the country for wildfires So this is a whole thing that that she has to contend with as somebody that is raising livestock So when we're talking about the operations of her farm like I cannot stress enough how much of a load this is This is not just a regular full-time job nine to five So I think it's really you know Kendall's obviously total workhorse.

I think is that the name of your podcast workhorse podcast So yeah, and the kindles obviously a total workforce But I just I thought it would be really impactful to have her on today because I really want you to understand how much of an impact You can make with an online business with very little time and energy input if you go about it the right way Because there is really no way to minimize the workload of an operation like what Kendall has Right we're talking about huge driving distances hugely

for demands, there's no way to sort of like cut that down more than it already is. So only place we can make change and effect change is the online business.

@7:10 - Kendall Ballantine (onlinemarketingforfarmers.com)

Absolutely. And I'm also a stepmom who is very involved. I do 100% of the homework doing for the kids.

Like I've had any some my nephew used to be in my custody. Like there is also a whole dynamic that goes along with step parenting and dual family housing and all the different things that plays a part in that too, also trying to balance this other end of things with my business responsibilities.

@7:33 - Melissa Rodgers (Self)

Yeah, 100%. I think that's one of the things we initially connected over. It is. For those that don't know, I have my own kids.

I have two younger ones, but I've also taken custody of my siblings. two out of the three that we took custody of right now, out of the home.

The youngest one is now technically an adult. He's 19, but he's still with us as he's going to university.

So Kendall and I bonded a little bit over kind of those weird dynamics of in of family members, you know, via the system, essentially, and what it looks like.

And that's a whole different ballgame, even than just a regular blended family. So, you know, there's, you might not have toddlers running around, but there's a lot of moving pieces there.

@8:14 - Kendall Ballantine (onlinemarketingforfarmers.com)

And it's very taxing mentally to take that on. So it's, you know, I mean, all parents and all adults that are showing up for kids have their thing, but that was very mentally taxing, while also trying to balance such big significant business responsibilities.

@8:28 - Melissa Rodgers (Self)

There's a significant dental load that comes with navigating being somebody's guardian or custodian via an institution. It's very hard.

And I don't think that that's, you know, thankfully, that's something that most people won't experience in their lives, but it's very difficult.

So, you know, to you. You've managed an incredible amount. So let's talk about the online business.

@8:55 - Kendall Ballantine (onlinemarketingforfarmers.com)

So you have online marketing for farmers.

@8:57 - Melissa Rodgers (Self)

You've just launched the Workhorse podcast. through, um, you know, how did you, how did you start out with online marketing for farmers?

What is your starting place? What were you offering? And then I kind of want to go through, what is your offer suite look like now?

And how has your marketing and messaging evolved? And then I want to talk about AI.

@9:17 - Kendall Ballantine (onlinemarketingforfarmers.com)

Yeah, I'm so excited about the AI part of things. So I originally started doing a little bit, I found that a lot of people were reaching out to me in relation to the farm and saying, how are you doing this?

just kind of asking me for advice. And of course, I didn't really have the time to be putting that into each individual person.

So originally quite a few years back, started doing just social media workshops at my farm, because we're in a pretty major concentration of population in our area.

So I just kind of started hosting some social media workshops so that I could, a, monetize the knowledge that I spent so much time, you know, building, but also so that I could serve people in a little bit more of a group setting instead of answering everybody individually.

I could just funnel them to I've got a workshop coming up. started doing that and then COVID hit and suddenly farmers markets were getting shut down.

My friends that are in agriculture were losing the restaurants that they could sell into or that they were previously selling into and it became something that we already had an online store.

@10:14 - Melissa Rodgers (Self)

We already had all of those pieces in place and all of my friends started calling me and they just were like losing their businesses couldn't figure out how they were going to meet their customers in a sale and like their sales channel was gone and so I business with tiny margins to begin with.

@10:29 - Kendall Ballantine (onlinemarketingforfarmers.com)

So tiny and like my produce growing friends they already had crops planted or they had the seeds purchased that they were planning to sell into restaurants and suddenly the crops that they were growing weren't going to go direct to consumers easily.

They didn't have email newsletters in place like none of those pieces were in place so everybody started reaching out to me and we were busier than we'd ever been because all of a sudden Costco had bent like you could only get two things a chicken and stores were wiped out a product so we were we've never been busy.

than that time. And all of a sudden, at that same time, everyone was reaching out to me. So I thought, can I answer these questions in the easiest way possible?

Because I want to show up for my friends. And so I went and launched an Instagram account that just was called Marketing for Farmers.

And anytime somebody would send me a question, I would just go on there and do it as like an Instagram live so that everybody got the answer at the same time.

And it just kind of slowly turned into charging for one-on-one services. And then I realized one-on-one services is not area that I should be putting my time, because I don't have enough of it.

And it kind of turned into a couple of workshops, pre-recorded workshops that turned into a group coaching program that I really launched on a whim.

I decided, and I remember we talked about it, because in one of the programs that I signed up for, I just decided I was going to do group coaching.

And I launched it that afternoon and we ended up selling like 60 spots in it right off the bat.

And that kind of has been now four years that we've been doing group coaching. That's our signature program now.

It is at a lower price point. I try to make it really accessible to women and agriculture so that they can come and especially because seasonally we are so busy in this industry.

What I find is because the price point is obtainable, people stay even through their busy seasons and then they kind of like check back in after that season is over.

And then we also do in-person retreats. Those are my high ticket item and so those are around right now the one we just sold out was $2,700 American per person.

So that is on the higher end of things for a couple of days and and we've been doing that now for four years.

@12:36 - Melissa Rodgers (Self)

So fun. So I mean you essentially and I think this is a story in a lot of niches. COVID opened up a demand for things that were maybe under the surface before but you know even across sort of like society I think COVID really exposed cracks in the way that we were doing things before.

think it amplified a lot of problems. that already existed and really, know, through a lot of businesses into this like friendly, right, or this demand that we just couldn't, couldn't have anticipated before.

And what's interesting is a lot of businesses have really suffered on the other end of that because the demand then subsequently dropped off, right?

So, you know, I, this is no shade to any of any realtors that are listening or any of my realtor friends, but you know, I see a lot of people in real estate, especially that really, you know, they attributed the success they were experiencing during the housing boom, especially in our area.

For those that don't know, if you're American listening, we have a market similar to the San Francisco area here.

So, it's very, very like overvalued for the most part. And, and so we have this, this crazy housing market, even in low times, you know, I think a lot of people attributed the housing, the success they were experiencing through the housing them to themselves, you know.

They're like, I'm just such a good marketer. I'm such a good realtor. such a good this. just picking on realtors because it's an easy, easy example.

You know, and then the market crashed and the billboards start going down. And, you know, people are kind of making these almost like desperate Instagram videos and stuff like that.

And it's been really interesting to watch the people that were able to ride the wave of COVID and the frenzy that that created and then create some longevity out of it.

So what do you think, you know, obviously things are fairly back to normal in terms of how, where people are, you know, selling their goods and stuff like that.

But in your niche, this is obviously something that you've been able not just to sustain post COVID but to grow.

And last I talked to you, we were kind of, you were in ready set scale. We were kind of looking at how could we restructure the offers that you have because the demand has not gone away.

But you don't have any more time.

@14:55 - Kendall Ballantine (onlinemarketingforfarmers.com)

No, no. So we, I increased my prices. I brought on a co-teacher, a girlfriend of mine that we have been in business doing things together for quite a long time.

She joined me. She had her own group program and has a really, really fantastic community of female entrepreneurs. So we brought our two programs together to really make it a bit more scalable in the way that would work for both of our time constraints, increase that price point, introduced AI into it.

We really have gotten things very streamlined and now I'm spending less time on it, making more impact because impact is a huge thing with what we do.

It's not just a financial thing for me. My goal as a business for the farm is to create food security initiatives and to be helping my community and feeding my community.

And I realize there's only so much that I can do at the farm level to be able to continue that goal.

We hit a plateau in how much food we can produce as a business and as a farm. There's only so much I can raise.

And then I realized that if I could help support other female farmers to be able to create financially secure business.

is they could continue to play a part in local food security in their own communities. And so for me, the impact is also equally as important or more important than the actual revenue that we're producing in that.

mean, obviously I'm a businesswoman, I need to make money while I'm doing it, but that impact part is so important to me.

And so when Jess and I came together and kind of rebranded our group coaching program, it's become so much more streamlined through the programs that I took with you to really better support the people that are in that program with us.

@16:29 - Melissa Rodgers (Self)

I love that. Would it be correct to say that the women that are in your world and the women that are learning from you, like their farm operations, and excuse me if I have this wrong because I am really ignorant when it comes to agriculture, but you know, these are not like factory farming operations.

@16:43 - Kendall Ballantine (onlinemarketingforfarmers.com)

These are operations like yours, right? Correct. So most of them are a direct-to-consumer farm, whether they're fully pasture-raised, like we are a free-range pasture-raised operation.

Most of them are very similar to what we do, but there's also flower farmers and vegetable growers, but these are women or families that...

are farming and selling directly into typically their local community. of them ship meat throughout the US. For the most part, it's family owned and operated, smaller scale producers.

@17:11 - Melissa Rodgers (Self)

Yeah. So, you know, it really does, it really does tangibly support that mission of creating food security and improving food quality for people, which, you know, if you're not to be too harsh, but if you're unlucky enough to have to purchase your food through the North American food system, that's a big deal.

@17:31 - Kendall Ballantine (onlinemarketingforfarmers.com)

Yeah, for sure. And these women are working so hard, like their stay at home moms, their husbands oftentimes they'll have or they are working off farm as well and trying to grow up that business to be able to be at home because I have this crazy idea that farmers should just get to be able to farm.

They shouldn't also have to like have an office job in town while trying to balance the demands of a family and a farm.

It's weird to me. So that was kind of part of this too, is like, how do I teach them how to diversify or

@18:00 - Melissa Rodgers (Self)

crease their revenue and margins to be able to have this be what they do if that's what they want for their family and so many of them come into my ecosystem and they're like I want my husband to not have to also work as an electrician in town because the demands on him are so intense or the demands for me that I'm also you know working on office Monday to Friday I'm a teacher or what have you while also trying to balance the farm it's it's a lot yeah 100 percent so excuse my voice um so let's talk about where your offer structure is at now so we we had a conversation about your membership because especially in this niche I've quite a few clients that work in the agricultural niche and the reality of that business is that margins are very tight so we are not talking about you know like most of you that know me know I have big beef with the business coaching industry but we're not talking about business coach that has 90 percent margins here you know and and can the more revenue that create the more disposable

income they have to invest essentially. That's not the case in agriculture, right? The margins are always going to be tight.

So, you know, we talked about how important it was to keep your price point accessible for your membership, but we also had a conversation about, you know, how can we innovate that a little bit so that it is more sustainable for you?

Because the challenge with a low price point membership that's high input for you is that it becomes scalable at a certain stage, right?

@19:26 - Kendall Ballantine (onlinemarketingforfarmers.com)

Yes. So, originally I had, when you joined the membership, you got 30 minutes one on one with me, that is gone.

That was not going to be scalable or sustainable. the reason that I had initially put that piece in is that I wanted to be able to learn where the women were within their business so that I could also direct them because this is not a start and stop membership.

@19:46 - Melissa Rodgers (Self)

This isn't like ready set scale where we did, you know, however many weeks that was and everybody started at the same time.

So, my concern had been these women are enjoying and it's like a fire hose to the face with 50 hours of pre-recorded content.

@19:58 - Kendall Ballantine (onlinemarketingforfarmers.com)

like, I don't even know where to start. So then I could kind of get with those women and say, okay, I'd recommend based on where you are in your business that you start here, here and here.

I have now automated that as a backend thing where they're able to fill out a survey and then it can recommend some things to them so that they are not having to have that sitting with me conversation for 30 minutes because that's just not sustainable for me and a growth of this to have my time for 30 minutes at the price point that I'm at.

So now we've taken that out of it. We've really streamlined the teaching sessions but everything to execute those teaching sessions is so much easier on the backend.

@20:33 - Melissa Rodgers (Self)

So it's not becoming more work based on the number of people that we have in that space. Perfect. And then you've also added in some digital products like you have a dog food, is that?

@20:44 - Kendall Ballantine (onlinemarketingforfarmers.com)

That one has been so good for me. So I launched a raw dog food guide because that's one of the big diversifications that we have in our farm.

And that cost me a lot to develop. took a lot of trial and error. took lab testing. It took balancing by animal nutritionists.

And that is something that not a lot of people have the bandwidth maybe to take on when they're already balancing and juggling their farm.

So we built out a guide for it. It includes our recipes, digital download, $197, and that has been really successful for us.

And we've had great feedback from our farm customers that it took all the guesswork. It tells the equipment they need, what we would do differently, how we package it.

@21:21 - Melissa Rodgers (Self)

It's the whole thing. Perfect. Okay, so let's shift gears a little bit. Now, you're able to do this again.

So we've established, Kendall is doing a bajillion hours of work a week when it comes to her farm operation.

So online business is very, you know, very low input compared to other kinds of businesses, but it still does require, it does require some things from you.

requires that you show up and do some form of content marketing, typically, in your case, that's primarily Instagram and email, correct?

Yes, yes, correct. Similar to me, it requires that you are not constantly but consistently. developing or refining offers that meet the market needs that you're working in, and it requires essentially that you have a steady stream of traffic to your online presence so that people can discover you, decide whether or not you're the person for them and then make a purchase from you.

That's, you know, are the bare bones of how we make money in an online business. So, let's talk about how you have implemented AI to make that happen because, you know, you realistically, we're looking at your week, you don't have enough hours to do all those things.

@22:36 - Kendall Ballantine (onlinemarketingforfarmers.com)

I don't. And when we first started talking, I kept seeing your stuff popping up about AI, and I said to my husband, I was like, got to take whatever it is that she's producing when it comes to AI, because one thing about agriculture and farmers tend to be behind the curve when it comes to things like this.

I was like, if I can get ahead of this, learn AI, not only implementing it into our business, but being able to understand that process for how it might work.

help our farming business and my clients' businesses. So at first, I really started looking at it for marketing for farmers and focusing on that end of things.

And it has been a game changer. We recently launched our podcast and we did transparency. I did hire a company to take care of our podcast launch, just uploading all of the things and editing the audio and all of those different things.

But what I found is the AI programs and the prompts and the things that I got from you and the learning that we did, I could duplicate or replicate a lot of the services that I was paying for by using those bots and putting it into chat GPT.

We were creating the blog post, the social media captions, the show notes, the summaries. I use it for doing my group coaching.

I just drop the transcript of my teaching in there and it generates every document that I need to be able to quickly upload it into Kajabi for my teaching platform.

@23:55 - Melissa Rodgers (Self)

so my customers can go in, they can watch the video, they've got beautiful show notes. There are times stamped so that they can go and see, know, hey, I just want to learn about this specific thing that was talked about.

They can go to that section in the video and I don't have to even think about it. And it's interesting.

So I have a stack of AI products. So I probably actually, no, I definitely don't market my AI offers enough.

Something I have to get on top of this year. But, you know, I have a stack of AI products that essentially allows you to start at the bottom with the most sort of like basic application.

So as a part of Ready Set Scale, one of the bonuses that you get is a product called AI Unleashed, which is a giant PDF of prompts and you just copy and paste them into your chat GPT chat or your quad chat or whatever you're using.

And it will like make the chat serve that purpose really, really well. So like, for example, if you want it to generate show notes for a podcast transcript or something like that, or you want it to write a blog post or you want it to write an Instagram carousel or whatever the whatever the use case may be.

And that's So what Kendall started with, I started getting little messages from her like, I had, I had no idea I could do this with GPT.

@25:07 - Kendall Ballantine (onlinemarketingforfarmers.com)

I had what else can I do? Because I use chat GPT the way that probably most people do when they start go in and I opened it and I asked it a question and I thought this is trash.

@25:17 - Melissa Rodgers (Self)

Like what it's getting me a trash. was like, this is, and I can still myself. person, you're like, no, this cannot be.

And I consider myself a writer, like, I am a farmer, but I am a marketer first.

@25:28 - Kendall Ballantine (onlinemarketingforfarmers.com)

My business does not succeed without and a big part of the marketing for our business. And the reason we've been so successful is people feel connected to me as a person.

So the idea of having a bot replacing how I speak and everything, everything it's bad. But I was like, this is trash.

don't know why people are using this. This is like, it's very obvious. It's written by AI. And then I took ready set scale, not for the AI portion of it, but it included the AI portion.

I was like, oh, oh, I just wasn't using it, right? And then I started using it. I started to like,

@27:00 - Melissa Rodgers (Self)

That requires that you actually know what you're talking about requires that you actually have a marketable skill set and I don't teach people to copy my business.

So I'll show you what I'm doing behind the scenes and I'll show you what I see working, but none of my clients are other like online business coaches.

I don't have a single one right now. I haven't actually for years. And I like it that way because it prevents that.

Yeah, in Midscape feeling. However, you can't like even my products. If you don't have your own, I don't know, like cohesive, coherent, intelligent thoughts, they're not going to help you.

You do actually have to know your subject matter. However, tiny bit of input from you and a tiny bit of documentation for you from you will combine to say I stuff will just like probably a hundred X your output.

@27:52 - Kendall Ballantine (onlinemarketingforfarmers.com)

put 10 X in on my marketing. Frankly, it's it's way more. It's way more. I sat there with with Jess.

We started working through. being the podcast launch this week, and we were doing some of that streamlining, like we, we live in different countries, so we came together this past weekend and spent the entire weekend, no kids, no family, no nothing, just the two of us from the moment we woke up and the moment we went to bed, and she is, she was very anti AI, she is experts responder, detective, she's very like really cares about like her language and all of this different stuff so she was very specific about the fact that she didn't love the idea of AI and then I sat down as like just I need you to keep an open mind because this is part of my thing anyways towards the end she was like, I really need to like I was just not training it right and like we were using it for our show notes and things like that and it was, and even when you wanted to change it like for her, it would give us a framework it would give us an incredible first draft even if we wanted to do some changes I mean you didn't have to you could copy and paste it directly in there, but I was so brain dead towards the end of that weekend of just like crushing business for that many hours.

on the exact same thing without, we weren't even getting up from the table, we were working for so long.

And just at the end, I was so brain dead that it was like, just dropping it in, it was giving me great results, but I could make little tweaks if I wanted to.

@29:13 - Melissa Rodgers (Self)

And at least I wasn't just starting at a staring at a blank screen. 100%. And to me, that's the power of it.

I struggle a lot with executive dysfunction. And you know, my life is busy and chaotic. same for most of the women that I work with.

It's unusual that it's unusual for me to have a client that doesn't have some kind of parenting responsibility, or some kind of caregiving responsibility, or something like that going on in their lives.

Most of them are very busy, very high achieving women, highly intelligent. But the reality of modern life is that most of us are approaching, if not in burnout.

And the worst, I think if you are an intelligent, high achieving person, the worst part about that is that it impacts you cognitively.

And you can't, you're not. Sharp, the way that you know you can be and one of my favorite things about implementing AI into your business this way is that you could be having the worst brain day on the planet.

And if you can just muster up the brain juice to drop a transcript or attack your business blueprint, like, and I have a bot for that literally in the programs, like if you can't get the brain power going to build out your business blueprint, I have a bot that will do it with you and feed you the answers, right?

So like there's it's and it's designed, my system is designed to overcome that executive dysfunction because the reality we are all experiencing it.

@30:38 - Kendall Ballantine (onlinemarketingforfarmers.com)

Oh, 100%. And I started doing the blueprint like I'm a smart woman.

@30:41 - Melissa Rodgers (Self)

I know my own business. We're good. I can do this.

@30:44 - Kendall Ballantine (onlinemarketingforfarmers.com)

And I started building all the blueprint. I was like, I don't feel like this is enough information that's coming out of my brain.

So then I started using the prompts and the bot that you have to build it out. And I was like, it was analyzing my business.

It was analyzing my social the content it was analyzing all the things that I was producing and coming up with such an incredible package describing back to me how I talk how I market what my business offers are it was giving ideas for different things that I wasn't even prompting it for and at the end I was like I said to my girlfriend I was like even if all I had walked away with was this blueprint where I now deeply understand how and why and my customers and what makes them relate to me that was just beautiful even if I wasn't going to then use it in the AI it gave me such a deep understanding of how my business and I operate.

@31:38 - Melissa Rodgers (Self)

100% I found that too that bot was a bit trickier to build and just you know for everybody's context and information so the prompt package is that you get the prompt package you get inside Ready Set Scale is for you 4th with Chachi B.

you are essentially feeding OpenAI your business information. So the other thing that we have in that program and we have these guys available in different formats as well in other programs is we have built-in that live inside my course portal.

Now those work by sending out an API call to OpenAI, which means that OpenAI is not getting the data that you put into those.

So if you have something proprietary, for example, when you're building out your business blueprint, if you have something proprietary that you don't necessarily want to feed to chat GPT so that it's now got it in its knowledge base, when you're using my bots, it's not getting that information.

Every time you exit out of the course, it's wiped clean. It's like a goldfish.

@32:42 - Kendall Ballantine (onlinemarketingforfarmers.com)

It won't remember you.

@32:43 - Melissa Rodgers (Self)

we have that data stored, but we have a confidentiality agreement with our like, you know, when you sign up for our terms and conditions, right?

we're not, we don't even look at it, to be honest. It's just stored and then disposed of. But we can protect your

added that way to an extent. And Kendall also subsequently signed up for the AI advantage, which is a course that shows you how to build your own bots in the same way.

So if you are looking to then kick it up a notch and build a more robust AI system for yourself, again, where you're not necessarily feeding all your information into chat GPT, but having those bots live on a domain that you own or in a behind a paywall or something like that so that it's a bit more secure, that workshop will show you how to do that.

And again, that comes with all the bug and play prompt. So you really, there's nothing for you to do.

It's all, it's all designed and set up so that you could be sitting there with a brain full of mush and, you know, the inability to generate a coherent thought and you can still get it done.

@33:48 - Kendall Ballantine (onlinemarketingforfarmers.com)

And that has been me all week. And I have been leaning into that like I use that and created some of my own bots.

And I have plans to put some of those into some of the courses that I'm already doing at an increased.

@34:00 - Melissa Rodgers (Self)

cost.

@34:00 - Kendall Ballantine (onlinemarketingforfarmers.com)

So it's that thing that it's going to help me justify a price increase on things. It gives me a tool that is not me having to control all of it and be able to get some help inside of those.

@34:14 - Melissa Rodgers (Self)

I'm so excited about that program. It was incredible. Yeah, it's really, it's really fun. I really, I really enjoyed putting that one together.

So if you were to, you know, if someone was talking you. So obviously you have a very established business in terms of the farm.

But online marketing for farmers is a smaller business that you obviously have less time to put into. So if someone was a beginner or in the kind of like intermediate stages of building their online business, you know, where would you recommend they start in terms of resources?

Like, would you say ready set scale?

@34:45 - Kendall Ballantine (onlinemarketingforfarmers.com)

Would you say start with a smaller AI product? What do you think? It is that scale was awesome.

@34:49 - Melissa Rodgers (Self)

I would jump right to that.

@34:51 - Kendall Ballantine (onlinemarketingforfarmers.com)

Okay. And that wasn't available initially when I was starting, you know, like if that was one that became and it was one I grabbed right away.

And then I started to see what that looked like. And I was realizing how convenient it was to have those bots inside that program.

And I was like, I wish my girls got to see that, like I wish the women in my space got to have something like that.

And of course, those bots are really built more with a service provider in mind, which is why I was in it.

And I thought, Oh, you know, that's why I wanted to learn how you did that. Because I was like, let's see if I can adapt some of those things that benefit the farm.

And if we can figure out how to make them adapt to a product based business, which I've already done because the teaching was so great inside of that space, I've already been able to adapt the blueprint to better suit when on the product based business, the type of business that I do.

And it's just been so incredible. But Ready Set Scale was the push that I needed to sit down, take a look at my offers, realize that I was, I mean, I knew I was underpricing some things, but figure out really what I wanted to let go of.

I finished that and I removed some of the offers off of my website. I dramatically increased some of the offers on my website and kind of reworked it.

And it was that was the push I needed. to also then see the benefits of using AI, and had I not taken that program, I don't think it would have jumped into the more extensive or building your own bots program.

I don't think I would have jumped air straight off the bat. So the ready set scale was the proof I needed that this could dramatically decrease my inputs that were required for my brain power because at these days I just don't I'm so taxed in that space that I needed something to be able to give me that push.

And then as soon as I did that, and you released your other AI program, said to have like, I got to sign up, I need to do this because this is like, because we are in a weird spot within our business where with the online business, I'm not ready to bring somebody on.

And I'm not, I'm not the best at working with a virtual assistant personally. And I think it's because I'm on go so much that they sit down to try to do their work.

And I'm out of reception on the way to the ranch or I'm, you know, replace that. for me and it's not disregarding the importance of value of a in like a real-person virtual assistant, it's just I'm not the best client for that with how my day looks.

@37:11 - Melissa Rodgers (Self)

So this is such a good supplement. is that you can bridge that gap with AI until the business is at a certain point and then ideally you would bring in an OBM or someone like that who is well versed in AI and you know that person would take that load from you so it's kind of you're able to jump that that river so to speak with AI in the meantime.

@37:34 - Kendall Ballantine (onlinemarketingforfarmers.com)

And I want to know even if I am outsourcing to a VA I think it's so important these days to understand how the program works even if you're not the one in your company who's going to be the one typing everything in but having an idea of what that's spitting back because there are people out there that are not using AI the way that it really should be and it is obvious when it's big back.

@37:54 - Melissa Rodgers (Self)

we see it all the time. How much content do you come across on Instagram now where you know it's even people don't even delete the little star

and dashes and, you know, dead giveaways. Yeah.

@38:04 - Kendall Ballantine (onlinemarketingforfarmers.com)

It's now that I know I really see it.

@38:07 - Melissa Rodgers (Self)

Yeah.

@38:07 - Kendall Ballantine (onlinemarketingforfarmers.com)

Now it's like glaringly obvious when it's being used. And whereas when you look at the content that's getting spit out for me, if you compare it to the stuff I've been writing for the last 10 years for my business, for the farm, you can't tell the difference.

Yeah. And that says a lot because I send a weekly newsletter and my customers are deeply attached to our family and what it is that we're doing.

that is the reason that people don't go to Costco and they make the extra effort to come to our farm because ultimately at the end of the day, I sell packs of chicken breasts and chicken thighs.

Like you can buy that more conveniently in a lower price somewhere else. And I mean, I think our meat's good, but you can find a more convenient, more price effective.

I don't have anything proprietary. I'm not teaching you to something revolutionary that's going to change your business with the farm.

But it is amazing. feel so connected and so it's really important to me. that if I'm implementing a tool that is supporting me in how I project myself, how I tell my story and how we connect with people, it's really important to me that that doesn't feel like one day I turn the switch and now a robot's talking to them because they're used to it being me.

@39:16 - Melissa Rodgers (Self)

Yeah, 100%. I think a lot of people can relate to that. That was a huge fear of mine, for sure.

@39:21 - Kendall Ballantine (onlinemarketingforfarmers.com)

Yeah, and I haven't had that be the case.

@39:24 - Melissa Rodgers (Self)

yeah, I'll change a couple of little things here, but it's just that having that just like really committed to saying like game changer or some yes, like it just really wants to put it in there and you just got to manually go through it.

Yeah, I had to go back to my blueprint for marketing for farmers. I'm like, don't say girl boss.

@39:42 - Kendall Ballantine (onlinemarketingforfarmers.com)

Never use that word for me again.

@39:44 - Melissa Rodgers (Self)

Thank you. Yeah, none of that, please. Ladies, my operations manager has a massive document of words. She's very much a words person and very meticulous.

She has a massive document of words that it's not allowed to say and she's uploaded. to every time she used to say, but it's cool to be able to know how to do that.

@40:05 - Kendall Ballantine (onlinemarketingforfarmers.com)

when I was building up my blueprint for marketing for farmers, it was thinking of things that I wouldn't have even thought of, but that I absolutely agree shouldn't be in there.

@40:12 - Melissa Rodgers (Self)

It was like, don't say anything disparaging to other forms of agriculture. And I was like, perfect, I didn't even think of that.

@40:18 - Kendall Ballantine (onlinemarketingforfarmers.com)

But that is how I don't do that in my marketing.

@40:21 - Melissa Rodgers (Self)

So thank you for recognizing that that's not something that I want my marketing. 100%. Getting it to analyze my communication style was one of the most impactful things I've done as a marketer.

It really clarified so many things for me. And I've literally watched my own business, things that I've been kind of wrestling with for years, just kind of click into place after having that analysis, because it is ruthlessly objective.

And you get data, it will see patterns that a human will never grab. I'm someone with like a, you know, undiagnosed, but everybody's pretty sure level of data recognition.

And I can't even touch the size, the things that it picks up on and fits back. It is just so helpful.

@41:09 - Kendall Ballantine (onlinemarketingforfarmers.com)

It was so cool. It was listening to our podcast transcript and it's Jess and I, and it was picking up the nuance between the styles of communication that we have, in that, you know, Jess is much more direct than I am and these types of things.

@41:23 - Melissa Rodgers (Self)

And she's like, well, I guess that's what being a, you know, police detective, a law enforcement detective that worked in very serious investigations.

She's like, yep, that would be me. But it was these things that we didn't think about. to write a file.

It's not how you write an instrument caption for sure.

@41:39 - Kendall Ballantine (onlinemarketingforfarmers.com)

So it was coming up with these like little nuances between us from uploading that single transcript. It was recognizing the differences in pattern for how we both express ourselves.

@41:50 - Melissa Rodgers (Self)

Yeah, that's amazing. Okay, well, I'm not going to take much more your time.

@41:53 - Kendall Ballantine (onlinemarketingforfarmers.com)

have one more question before we go.

@41:55 - Melissa Rodgers (Self)

before I ask it, you are absolutely allowed to say no. I'll just cut it out.

@41:59 - Kendall Ballantine (onlinemarketingforfarmers.com)

I'm kidding.

@42:00 - Melissa Rodgers (Self)

But the question is, so one of my, the goal of ready set scale is not to be like an information based course.

There are information based trainings. There's a comprehensive sort of like, this is why we're doing this, here's the background set of video trainings, audio trainings in every single module.

But the goal is actually for it to almost be plug and play. So, you know, kind of like an online business in the box.

So you open up the course. And even if you don't watch the trainings, even if you just skim through them, the goal is that there's enough templates and tools in each module that you literally can just plug and play your stuff into it and walk away with an offer suite, walk away with good messaging, walk away with a marketing plan and the means to execute it and walk away with a way to implement AI into your business.

Do you think that was achieved in your experience with the course?

@42:52 - Kendall Ballantine (onlinemarketingforfarmers.com)

A million percent. I did the one section that talked about the offers, and then I went into the next section where it talked about how to market.

offers, I did one thing I created one Instagram post that I had never thought to create before using the program.

@43:06 - Melissa Rodgers (Self)

And it generated me $1970 US in a matter of 24 hours. Yeah.

@43:13 - Kendall Ballantine (onlinemarketingforfarmers.com)

And it's now my pinned post at the top. And it's like regularly, you had verified something that I had yet to do.

And you were like, if you don't do this, and I'm not going to say what it is, don't want to give it away.

But if you're like, if you don't do this, people are not going to buy your digital download. And I was like, crap, I've never done that before with my digital download.

I went and did it. And I'm saying I hadn't sold that digital download in three months, like a single one.

So I know this isn't just, you know, the regular momentum of doing it. I did that singular post. I shared it to my Instagram stories.

And $1970 US of that specific product sold in 24 hours. So more than paying back.

@43:52 - Melissa Rodgers (Self)

we won't it away.

@43:53 - Kendall Ballantine (onlinemarketingforfarmers.com)

But yeah, I know that that course I like was ready to invest more money into the next one that you're

Offering because it just it immediately returned and that was from basically a plug-in-play situation. I built out my offers It helped me realize what the benefits of those offers were and who those offers really are going to be best for and then I used that information and went into the next portion of the portal and Created that one piece of content using AI That's amazing.

sold the bunch So yeah, it was absolutely what I needed and it took zero time for me to even so when I was done I said to my husband J.

like even if that's all I got from it was that it more than paid for itself and made me more money Amazing.

@44:39 - Melissa Rodgers (Self)

I love it.

@44:40 - Kendall Ballantine (onlinemarketingforfarmers.com)

Oh, that makes me so happy. didn't it. It's fantastic like hands down I say to anybody I was like I'm so happy that I have invested in that and I have invested in things that didn't Have a change on my business.

I've invested in things and I've invested a lot of money and things I've gone to in-person retreats and I've done all sorts of things and there's been times where I'm like cool

That did not give me what I thought it going to work that five years. Yeah, yeah, first move along and then the only thing I can leave from that with is I hope I don't ever do that to somebody else.

Like that ends up being the only teaching lesson I can find is, well now I know what not to do and that becomes a very expensive learning what not to do because I already know I don't want the case.

@45:22 - Melissa Rodgers (Self)

Yeah, it's just learning what to do is very expensive.

@45:25 - Kendall Ballantine (onlinemarketingforfarmers.com)

Very expensive and so that was not the situation is which is why I keep buying all the things that you're offering because it's been giving me my time back and yes it takes a little bit of time to you know do a blueprint or fill out the documents but you've got the tools and resources built inside of it to make it as easy as possible but taking and sitting down and spending the little bit of time that I needed to do within that program has tenfold paid itself back in the time savings that I have to so even if we're not talking direct financial my time is worth money my time is worth a lot of money based on the business that I have.

with the farm so it justifies me continuing to do marketing for farmers which to me is so important because that business entity isn't attached to having to be working the crazy hours and working being attached to having all this livestock and this massive overhead like if something were to happen I could not run central park farms alone and so marketing for farmers is something that allows me that being a security and allows me something that like I wanted to treat my husband to something really great for his birthday and I you know did it not out of our joint business like business income like it felt good to be able to do some like extra things for my family at Christmas and stuff that came out of that money yeah it's it's very empowering I agree it's been fantastic well thank you so much for your time I won't take any more of it where can everybody find you if they want to come and check out your businesses yeah so you can find me over at marketing for farmers.com you can find me over at marketing for farmers just all the places I also over at the farm at Central Park Farms amazing

Well, thank you so much and I will, I'm sure I'll talk to you again soon in the DMs. Yeah, thanks so much.

Okay, take care. Bye.