Be Better Studios is turning 15 years old this month! This is a major milestone for us, as we’ve finally reached new heights in our entrepreneurial journey. For years, Amy and I have been blessed with the experience of working with so many talented small-to-medium sized businesses, along with solopreneurs of distinct variety. We’ve worked diligently all this time, pushing ourselves to create solutions for all kinds of challenges in various industries in multiple countries, but we always wanted a business of our own where we apply our experience to make a tangible difference in our local community.
We also struggled with growth. While we are creative types and have developed a network of other skilled creatives we can partner with, we never really saw a path to creative leadership. Expanding a graphic design business seemed to require a level of charisma and compromise, which we don’t think we have. Being creative is different than managing creatives. So we have preferred to stay small, work with freelancers as needed, and retain our flexibility as a dynamic creative team.
This is the tale of how we broke through our growth ceiling, while remaining small. The story begins in 2019 when we began prepping for our 10th year anniversary. This is the year we discovered permaculture. Permaculture is an ethics-based design science which mimics systems found in nature to design resilient agricultural systems which, in turn, produce food and resources sustainably.
The farming methodology was invented by Tasmanian native Bill Mollison in the late 1970’s. His big idea was to apply design principles to agriculture. Being nature lovers and designers ourselves, permaculture was an instant fit.
In 2019, I started learning permaculture from Geoff Lawton’s permaculture course. In 2018 we moved to Tamworth, NH from Portsmouth and had purchased a 5.25 acre plot in the woods so we could apply what we had learned immediately. The timing was good because this initial building phase kept us busy the entire pandemic.
The challenge was how to make a profitable farming business with permaculture. The methodology is famous for homestead scale, but could it be profitable at farm scale? Using our experience working with all kinds of different entrepreneurs, and being entrepreneurs ourselves, we saw a path for a permaculture-based business, but we knew it would take work to achieve.
Being 10 years in business, we knew it was time to change things up with Be Better Studios. The over-arching question was if Be Better created a new business how could it benefit Be Better instead of replacing it? The answer was obvious, we could use it to hone our marketing and design skills. We could be our own client with no limitations on what could be achieved with our Be Better skills apart from the ones we create ourselves.
This is the ‘White Whale’ of every design firm. How can you earn additional income with your skillset, and not just from the skillset? Permaculture was going to be the path for us. We wouldn’t need to grow our design business if we used our skills to grow a community-focused business. And what could be a better community-focused business than a farm?
In 2019, on the eve of the 10th anniversary of Be Better Studios, Amy and I rolled up our sleeves and began our second act. We have always been busy bees, but starting a farm while operating a busy graphic design firm, re-defined the term busy. Most of the farm was built with headlamps in the dark. Living just a few miles from the Sandwich Range Wilderness area, means we were outside with all the noctural critters too, especially bears!
It took us about a year to generate enough farm to produce a substantial yield to work with. The first harvests from our farm was during the pandemic, and most of it was consumed and given away. By 2021, we had enough product to sell at the farmers market. It took about two years of farm development to have all of our initial systems yielding a return, so around 2022 the farm as a real business took flight.
The challenge of farming as a business is one of the more interesting ones we had from a design and marketing point of view. We’ve identified the following two concerns with a permaculture design business and their solutions:
- Permaculture is difficult to scale from homestead to commercial. Our solution was to be a farmstead. We would keep all the food local and sell value-added goods regionally and online.
- Farms are subject to seasonal differences. How will we survive the winter “dead zone” when nothing is growing? Permaculture offered the solution here. Diversification offers different yields pulsing throughout the seasons. It will be food and resource production throughout the growing season and manufacturing throughout the dead zone.
Next, we identified the following four business strategies we would employ:
- Who is our target audience? These are foodies, growers (gardeners), and environmental-conscious consumers.
- How will we reach our audience? Targeted advertising, internet marketing, a e-newsletter, and word-of-mouth will be the primary means. We will focus almost entirely on collecting our own zero-party-data.
- How will we sell our food and products? Community and regional events, e-commerce, and a farm store.
- What sets us apart from other farms? Our unique methodology allows us to focus on quality over quantity. We will be a carbon-negative farm meaning we will be as self-sufficient as possible, storing more carbon than we consume with our energy usage. We will open-source all our knowledge.
Amy and I built Again & Again Farmstead over the span of 6 years and boot-strapped it. The farm has earned growth year-after-year, and has grown into a decent business with seemingly endless potential.
The great thing about permaculture is all the work is up front, and the systems are easy to maintain once you have them established. We wake up, do the farm chores by 9:00am or 10:00am, and then move into the office for our Be Better work. Most days we finish up by 6:00pm and then decide over dinner where to put our energy for the rest of the day. If it’s Be Better projects which need it, we’ll throw after-dinner time into Be Better, but if we are all caught up, we’ll go to work on improving the farm systems.
We have sheep, chickens, ducks, a market garden, an orchard, and a small manufacturing space to maintain, but we love it. We get to work in the digital space and then ground ourselves by stewarding God’s creation. My stress has reached all time lows, and Amy and I eat like kings from the food we produce. While farming isn’t for everybody, it’s for us and we love how it connects us to the local Tamworth community as well.
Now we at Be Better Studios are celebrating our 15 year anniversary with a 6-year farm business in tow, we will be using the gifts we are given to the benefit of you. Not only could you buy our farm’s food and products, but we’ll be leveraging the farm to become better designers and marketers. We’ll share our experiences on the blog running an e-commerce store, selling manufactured products, and the many lessons growing a small, community-focused business.
More than just a White Whale, Again & Again Farmstead has become the ultimate sandbox for a graphic design business. It’s the kind of growth we dreamt to achieve with Be Better Studios. We just arrived there another way. Let us apply our unique experience to your own small business. We have more graphic design and marketing experience to share than ever before.
Contact us with your small business needs and we’ll design solutions for you.