#10 Ryan Lockwood: Turning a personal challenge into a profitable small business

In this episode, the owner of BCK Ranch, Ryan Lockwood, shares how a family health crisis sparked the launch of their thriving family-owned-and-operated microgreens business. Ryan opens up about bootstrapping startup costs, building business credit with Nav, and expanding — despite big bank rejections. He shares real insights into juggling personal savings and reinvesting profits to fuel aggressive growth. Get tips on stepping out of your comfort zone, growing customer relationships, and sharpening your competitive edge to compete with bigger players.

Disclosures:

Nav Technologies, Inc. is a financial technology company and not a bank. Banking services provided by Thread Bank, Member FDIC. The Nav Visa® Business Debit Card and the Nav Prime Card are issued by Thread Bank pursuant to a license from Visa U.S.A. Inc. and may be used everywhere Visa cards are accepted. See Cardholder Terms for additional details: https://www.nav.com/prime-card-terms/. All other features of the Nav Prime membership are not associated with Thread Bank.

With regard to credit building features: scores are calculated from many variables; some users may not see improved scores. The Nav Prime Card is a business financing product and may not be used for personal, family or household transactions.

Nav Technologies, Inc. (“Nav”) makes no assurances or representations regarding the accuracy or sufficiency of the information included in this podcast. This podcast is for educational purposes only, and is not legal or financial advice. If you have questions, consult a trusted professional to help you make specific decisions about your business. The views, opinions, and statements expressed by the host and guests on this podcast are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of Nav.

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Chapters

• 0:00 The Inspiring Story Behind BCK Ranch
• 4:10 Navigating Startup Challenges and Finances
• 7:26 Finding Initial Customers and Building Relationships
• 11:08 Reinvesting Profits and Financial Strategies
• 16:55 When to Go Full-Time: Planning the Leap and Budgeting for the Hidden Costs
• 22:53 Building Business Credit and Overcoming Rejections
• 27:14 Working with Credit Unions & Local Financial Institutions
• 28:35 Growing Beyond Local: Expanding a Small Business Nationwide

Transcript

Ryan Lockwood (00:00)

It's not only building our business here, it's putting that business mindset into the kids. The kids help unload. They help plant. You know, they're talking about what they want to do, what businesses they want to have when they grow up. We're bringing them into that entrepreneurial spirit too knowing that they're following that path too.

Catherine Giese (00:19)

Welcome to Main Street Makers, a bi-weekly podcast that features real, local small business owners who have transformed their passions into profitable businesses. Learn from fellow small business owners on how they overcome challenges, find opportunities, and create thriving operations that make our neighborhoods more vibrant, connected places to live. I'm Catherine, and this podcast is brought to you by Nav, the business credit platform that believes every small business owner deserves the chance to succeed. Nav Technologies Inc. is a financial technology company and not a bank. Banking services are provided by Thread Bank member FDIC. Now, let's get to this week's show.

Catherine Giese (00:56)

I'm really excited to welcome Ryan to the podcast. He is the owner of BCK Ranch, which is a microgreens company based in Houston, Texas. Ryan's a really special guest for us because he was actually the first customer story that we ever did. So our team got to actually go to his home and meet his family and see all the equipment that he uses to grow the greens and really learn about his business and his day to day.

So we're really excited to have him on to share about his business and how he's been growing it over the past few years. Welcome.

Ryan Lockwood (01:27)

Thanks for having me. It's been an amazing experience over the last couple of years. Just being introduced to Nav. We never knew anything about it and a really close friend of ours introduced us to Nav and then, you know, lo and behold, we were able to have the opportunity to meet and to have you guys over to show you guys everything that we do. Over the last couple of years, just the expansion that we've seen and just the relationships that we've been able to just grow over the last couple of years has a lot to do with y'all and Nav.

Catherine Giese (02:03)

Well, we certainly love to hear that. You've been really amazing to us as well. Just sharing so many of your insights. We've learned so much from you. So thank you. So first off, I would love to just have you share about your reason behind why you started your business. I know you have a really moving reason. We're big fans for sure. So I'd love for you to just share that with everyone.

Ryan Lockwood (02:27)

Sure, so before the business ever started back in January of 22, my wife gave birth to our son Charlie and she started having some really bad allergies and we didn't know what it was at the time. Couldn't figure it out — it wasn't standard allergies, but she was having really bad allergic reactions to food and lo and behold, it came out that she was allergic to nickel. So it being a kind of a rare allergy, there was nothing on the market. There's no medications. There's no, you know, anything out there. 

So we were kind of just at a standstill of what do we do to fix an allergy? We never were planning on starting a business about it, but, we saw some ads, we saw some reels just about, microgreens and just hydroponic produce in general. So kind of in the last ditch desperation, we decided to try it and lo and behold, microgreens helped. 

So they started clearing up her allergies. And then we realized that through the different Facebook groups, there's the different societies that she was a part of that there was a market out there of people that are having these same allergies and same reactions. So we just started BCK ranch and hopes to help people fix the allergies because the hydroponics removes all the heavy metals, all the junk, all the pesticides, herbicides, everything else. So you're not only getting a cleaner product from us, but we're helping those people that have those allergies just to kind of have a second chance.

Catherine Giese (03:56)

I love that mission so much and I'm sure that you've helped so many people just like Taryn. So I would love for you to talk through with us kind of like tactically what were the early days like in your business? What were the startup costs? What was it like managing your finances? Take us kind of behind the scenes.

Ryan Lockwood (04:14)

Sure, no one really tells you that in the beginning that it's a lot of bootstrap. It's gonna take a lot of your personal finances. You can't just walk in a bank and just say, I need a loan for just say $50,000 for a startup company, especially in farming with the big banks. They wanna see capital, they wanna see everything behind it. So if you don't have the savings, you don't have the years in business.

We were just kind of shunned away from the banks. So it took a lot of overtime, a lot of savings. Just the startup costs weren't enormous per se with the seeds and the equipment and everything, but it was still a hit. So we just had the kids, still working full time. So it was just any and all extra cash that we could set aside for the business. That's kind of how the earlier days were.

the first two years come to find out the first two years in business, banks don't really consider you a business or a thriving business. So yeah, it was just a lot of overtime, a lot of extra cash saving here and there to get the equipment we needed to and off and running. We had to put a lot of stuff off the first couple of years. And you know, we had some great ideas and everything else. It just wasn't in the books at the time in the first couple of years, but now that we're finally getting settled and finally getting past that two-year mark, it's been a lot easier with the financing with Nav being a huge aspect of that with the business building credit. That's helped out a ton when we go to the banks and we've had that opportunity to show them our business credit over the last couple of years growing.

Catherine Giese (05:48)

Yeah, that's such a common story that we hear with new businesses that it can be so hard to kind of get over that initial hump of getting all of your your startup costs together and everything. You mentioned that you had some kind of like big plans that you had to put off in order to make sure that you had enough money to like start the business.

Could you tell us kind of specifically how you perhaps downsized your idea to make it viable?

Ryan Lockwood (06:15)

Yeah, so initially, one of our big projects was our trailers, our hydroponic trailers that we wanted to start getting, but all in all, the cost was going to be just way too high initially. So as much as we wanted to hit the ground running, we just kind of scaled it to microgreens. We just kept a few racks of microgreens.

Kind of let everybody know like here's our future plans, this is what we're planning on getting into the towers like you see behind us or the trailers or shipping out of Texas. We just kind of kept it local at first. We just knew that with the money we had at the time, we had to keep it local, we had to just start building that business small. 

And then once the money started coming in from the business, not necessarily from any kind of loans or anything like that. We were able to put a chunk of the side a little at a time and then just slowly start adding equipment in and giving more products out. But we had to just scale it way back and just keep what we knew would work.

Catherine Giese (07:12)

Yeah, and how did you go about finding those initial customers? Like, I know that your early customers were, you mentioned all local, and I think you mentioned that you had like some restaurants and stuff in the mix. How did you kind of go about that?

Ryan Lockwood (07:26)

Getting out of my comfort zone. That was the biggest thing. We had some family friends that we had initially started off with. Trial and error, first couple of rounds were horrible until we really got going on it and knew the whole process, but it was really just knocking on doors. For the restaurants, we just went to talk to the chefs.

And just kind of had to leave samples and just kind of hope for the best. We were lucky with our grocer. I was actually sitting in the car with Taryn at the time and I was like, man, this just goes horrible. Like I can't. So it was just one of those things. And I walked in and I talked to the manager. We sat there for a while. And then, and at the end of the conversation, she's like, when can we get started? I was kind of thinking of micro greens. We really didn't have anybody come in. We've tried it before.

So what can you bring in? So it was just, and then I walked back out and I was like, that was it. So it was one of those, it was just getting out of that comfort zone. and actually just knocking on doors and, still to this day, we've had our grocer for the last couple of years. We've had some people come and go, but the relationship building that we've had from it has been a great thing along with just kind of getting those, those early ones out.

Catherine Giese (08:42)

Yeah, that's so funny that you talk about getting outside of your comfort zone. Yeah, knocking it down doors is definitely outside of many people's comfort zone. I'd love for you to talk us through how you kind of went about fulfilling those early orders? Because I would imagine that you were trying to find customers, but you also had certain capacity limits based off of what you could afford with equipment. How did you kind of think through that?

Ryan Lockwood (09:10)

It was mostly just trial and error, honestly. You know, it kind of got to a point where we didn't have enough trays or we didn't have enough seed and we were kind of like, “Crap. I need to kind of just keep track.” So Excel, Excel, Excel. That was kind of where it came down to.

Putting pen to paper and saying, if we max out every week on microgreens and produce, like, where do we have to be? It's a brand new business too, if you try to come back and say, hey, I know I promised you this, but I can't do it, then ultimately it kicks back to you. You know, we had to put it on a spreadsheet, we had to put it numbers and saying, “This is where we're at.”

And then when we were able to order more trays, and that was a big thing for us too, is when we were able to save up for that bulk order, that initial bulk order, which was kind of great to have everything come in, because then we knew that the opportunities were just opening back up. But in those early days, yeah, it was just like, okay, we have this order, can we do it? And there were days where we were harvesting and then running outside and planting. Before we really got our system down and got enough equipment, it was kind of chaos at first because we were just harvesting to cleaning to planting the same night and some days we'd have to put off a delivery for a couple of days just because of that switch over. It was a lot of trial and error.

Kind of keeping it behind the scenes. We're like, hey, everything's great. But so it was chaos at first, but it was kind of controlled chaos.

Catherine Giese (10:51)

Sometimes you just have to kind of figure it out. I mean even for us, we're a startup and so while we've gotten sophisticated and large, like there are certain things that you just got to feel out through trial and error. So that makes a ton of sense.

How did you think about actually financing those changes? Were you just like reinvesting all of your profits back into the business? Were you kind of dipping into savings and considering that as part of your startup costs? I'd love for you to walk us through that.

Ryan Lockwood (11:21)

We're taking profits right back. Even till today. We really don't take any draws from the company. We're just really just reinvesting still in the growth stage. You know, the first five years are really, crucial. It was personal savings and we had to just cut back on stuff, you know, and then luckily we were able to pay some stuff off. So then we took the money that some of the credit cards and just different stuff that we had paid off. We just paid off our truck soon after. So that was a good chunk. And we're like, hey, we're just keeping our budget the same, but we're reinvesting this money and these chunks going into the business.

And then of course that was just a struggle because we're like, hey, if this doesn't work out, you know, we've reinvested a lot of money into it and now we're going to have all this equipment and seeds and we're just going to be eating it all physically and, everything else too. It was kind of just a pray and hope and just invest where we could.

Catherine Giese (12:23)

Yeah, and how do you think about the trade-off between taking a draw versus reinvesting in the business so that it can grow faster?

Ryan Lockwood (12:32)

And I guess that's a good thing too, of actually still being full-time work, you know, so we don't have to have that, that aspect of what happens if, if we can just put a hundred percent in, on the business and, and reinvest all that money that way, you know, our day-to-day personal stuff is, is taken care of. So that's the big help.

Honestly, if it was just us and just the business, it would have been a lot slower process, so to say, with actually taking it to the next level. We were able to just say, you know what, we're going to take this profit, we're going to reinvest it. These are our goals that we had written down at the time, and it was just press, press, press. That way, we could get to our goals faster until we finally got to that two-year mark where we were able to get our line of credit, which helped significantly at that mark. Initially, it was just wherever we could spare the cash and we were just saying, boots on the ground and let's do it. Kind of burn the ships moment, know, burning them and not look back.

Catherine Giese (13:45)

Yeah. So are you full time in the business yet or are you both still working and growing the business on the side?

Ryan Lockwood (13:54)

So both full-time, it's getting closer. The last couple of years, we've actually been doubling our profits every year. So we've been making significant growth. So we're kind of just focusing on that. Initially to bring Taren home first, we're getting closer to that point, which then of course with all of that is gonna take, just speed things up.

But right now she's working on her own business and she's kind of scaled back from full time. But yeah, we're both full time right now, but we're working it.

Catherine Giese (14:27)

Yeah, that's great. I'm always curious because like people have different preferences for going full time in their business. Like some people are just like, burn the boats. I'm going to go for it and just do it and I'm going to make it work. And other people continue to have their full time job and they're really aggressive about growing the business on the side and really intentional about when they go full time and have goals. So I'm always kind of curious, like what individual's preferences are and how they go about things.

Ryan Lockwood (14:56)

There was a business owners’ group that I was a part of for a while. That helped out a lot. and I sat one on one with one of the guys, the main guy behind it — he was a fireman that ended up leaving the fire department and starting his own business and everything out there too. And just sitting down and talking with him and going over everything. That helped a lot. Cause I actually got to know the point of where I needed to be in order to leave.

And I was significantly off when I was like, hey, this is what I got to make. And I'm out. And he's like, well, let's talk through it. And then I was like, all right, well, we're going to be full time for a while until we get to that point. it was having that really kind of just refocused where we needed to be, we knew we had that set goal to have that number written down to where like, once I hit this, like, we're good. 

So, but it was able to, he was able to bring in all of the extra unknowns that we hadn't thought about too. Along the way, we've had opportunities with a lot of different people and the business owners and just everybody else that supported us has brought something to the table in order to help us grow.

Like our freeze-dried that we just started up, doing freeze-dried microgreens because we've just had people say, “Hey, why don't you guys do this? This would help out a lot.” So we've taken a lot from just the personal aspect, the personal friends on top of other business owners and kind of refocused and re-engaged to where we know we're kind of on the right path to get to that full-time moment.

Catherine Giese (16:44)

Yeah, having a supportive community around you of people that you can just lean on for multiple different kinds of support is so important when you're trying to make something like this happen.

So you mentioned that you sat down with this fireman who left the department and kind of walked through your numbers. So it sounds like you kind of started with the end in mind a bit. You were like, this is my goal and like created a step-by-step plan for how to actually achieve that. Could you walk us through that?

Ryan Lockwood (17:14)

Yeah, so it was kind of mind opening in the fact that like I initially had just not taken into account, you know, inventory versus normal operational costs into it. It was kind of, we took our normal monthly budget that we're spending now and I was like, okay, well, I just need to get to X amount and I can leave.

And then it was like, okay, have you thought about retirement? Have you thought about your inventory costs? Have you thought about health insurance? Have you thought about everything that I wouldn't have thought about that's covered under, you know, your normal full-time jobs that is kind of just part of your paycheck that you didn't think of? So it was kind of like a step back, and kind of move forward from there. 

So we're able to bring it from a wide aspect down to a more narrow saying, and just add it to our Excel spreadsheet. Like, okay, so this is the stuff that we need to cover. so we can budget for health insurance off the guy. So we can budget for everything else that we need to. And we just keep those numbers updated so we can say like, okay, is this getting closer? Is it getting further away? What do we have to do?

But it was one of those things that I was just like, okay, kind of like a gut punch, you know, I'm like, I'm doing really good. And then I'm like, wait a minute, have you thought about all this extra stuff? I was like, and back to square one, it feels like even though it wasn't, but ultimately, it was refreshing to know to have somebody there that was actually in the same shoes in the same boat and part of it and been like, okay.

Cause a lot of the guys at the fire department and fire stations have a side job just because they're bored. You know, it's extra cash coming in, but a lot of it isn't like, “Hey, like, see you guys later.” You know, if you're not part of that 20–30 year plus kind of deal, it's kind of unheard of. So there's those guys that… it's nice to have and there's other business owners and other people that say like, yeah, it's, it's worth it. You know, let's hit the ground running together, having that community like you said.

Catherine Giese (19:17)

Yeah, it's so nice to have people who are in the same boat as you, who are doing the things that you want to do there to support you and give advice. That's always great. I do want to dig into the Excel spreadsheet. you've mentioned that a few times and we're going to dig into that. How do you actually pencil through expansion and think about how to finance, like, for example, new trees and those types of things?

Ryan Lockwood (19:44)

As far as bringing it through, like you said, through the Excel spreadsheet and everything else like that. So we have our normal sales channel as a spreadsheet. So all of our sales. Then we have all of our expenses. and then we brought it down. This came from my buddy too — knowing your average monthly order volumes.

So you can kind of just see, okay, so I have an average order every month of say $1,000 I'm bringing in as an example. And I'm having $400 worth of expenses. Like, okay, so I know I'm gonna have this $600 coming in. I know we're going to have these loans to pay. We're gonna have all this stuff coming up, and keeping track of our inventory and saying, okay, so I know that.

All of this stuff's going up, but once that's covered, we're able to say, okay, let's put this other money aside for like… we got the trailer finally after a couple of years. So we were able to get that P&L in order and get that set and say, “Okay, well, let's make sure we're covered — plus an extra timeframe just in case something happens, somebody drops off — and make sure we're covered there and then.”

Just flip that extra profit right back into our extra expansion. Like I said before, every time that we can, we're just dumping it right back into the business. And as hard as it is just not to take the profits and be excited about it, ultimately it helps expand our goals too. 

So we’re not just stuck in one spot. Hey, we're covered. We can do this. It's like, no, like we have these goals in mind and what else comes next. And like you said, expansion and… what our family, what our business is going to look five, 10, 15, 20 years down the road. So it's been kind of write down those goals and just saying, when can we do it as far as like, is this something we got a table for?

Six months, a year, five years from now. Having that written down has helped out a lot in getting that in order.

Catherine Giese (21:49)

Yeah, so just kind of seeing it in the sheet and all the numbers helps you then face the reality of like, is this possible or does it need to wait?

Ryan Lockwood (21:59)

Yeah, exactly. And is this something that's consistent? The biggest thing is, is this profit coming forward and consistent, or is this just a good month, you know, good month, bad month so the last couple of years of actually going back and seeing that profit loss and, and where our average monthly, you know, income is saying, okay, well now we're stable and we know this is coming in and these are what's kind of just on repeat. So now what's next? What can we order? What can we expand to knowing that we're not just taking a huge bite out of everything.

Catherine Giese (22:35)

Yeah, having that predictability is really important in being able to plan ahead and have stability in your business. So that's cash flow. What about your routine around credit? How do you kind of check those two things and make sure that you're tracking towards your goals?

Ryan Lockwood (22:53)

The credit like I said, when we initially got the Nav credit, was huge for us. And at the time, we didn't even know what business credit looked like. So no one really explains it to you. No one ever says anything besides your personal credit. So Nav was a huge kind of jumpstart for us on business credit.

Up until the point where we hit our two-year mark and we were able to go back to the Farm Bureau and say, like, look, we hit our two-year mark. Here's our business credit that we've been building over the last couple of years. And from there, once we hit that, they're like, hey, we see everything's in order. And they gave us our big line of credit and operating funds from. 

So business credit was huge — because it took that stress off from personal credit and personal finances and said, now we're really kind of that business in order, you know? That was kind of the switch, I would say, from like, “Okay, is this gonna happen? Is this going to progress to finally kind of after two years of being, you know, kind of just kicked down and everything and saying, not now?” to finally saying, “Let's work together.” So, you know, the business credit has been huge.

Catherine Giese (24:15)

Yeah, I love to hear that. It is so common that people talk about personal credit and revenue and kind of leave business credit out of the picture. I know a year or two ago, and you did talk about this as well, it was really hard for you to get funding as a new business and in your industry specifically. Could you walk us through… what was that rejection process like and how did you actually work towards that goal of getting a line of credit?

Ryan Lockwood (24:46)

Yeah, so banks don't like hearing the word hydroponic by any means. So they're like, “Okay, what are you doing in ag?” And as soon as you say hydroponics, everybody goes to the worst case scenario. As soon as you'd walk in and try to sit down with them, they're like, “Well, what's your business income?” And we're like, “Well, it's hardly anything right now, because we're just starting off.” And they're like, “You know what? Do you want to take a personal loan?”

Like, no, I don't want to take a personal loan. I came here for the business loan. We tried multiple big banks and it was almost to the point where like, as soon as we knew we went in, it was just going to be an instant, like get out of here, you know? That's kind of… was kind of the defeating thing at first, cause we had the business, we had everything going. But that was what was holding us back.

It was our really good friend that got introduced to Nav. And that's what he's like, I'm big banks. He's like, I told you. He's like, I wanted you to go out and fail and see how it was to get rejected by the big banks. Just so you know. So then he's like, all right, let's sit down. We have this company called Nav.

You're going to build up your business credit. You're going to get your name out there. You're going to start building this she's like, think of it as like your mom and dad adding you on a credit card when you're young, you know, so you're going to be all these payments are going to be building your business credit. So by the time you hit that two year mark, you know, it's going to be two years because that's what the bank was telling us. Like take this two years, suck it up and let's build your credit. So that's what it really came down to.

And even to this day with big banks, we try to stay away from all the big banks. So we've kind of moved even our personal stuff away from the bigger banks just for kind of the way that they operate. know, they just, they either have the capital or get out. You know, they don't want to take the risk on you. So we kind of just searched around for the companies that were like, Hey, you know, you're going to invest in us. We're going to invest in you. So that's kind of where we stayed. And we just kind of stayed away from the corporate rejection, so to speak.

Catherine Giese (26:51)

Yeah, it can be really challenging with the big banks. They certainly have marketing around small business, but their definition of small business is quite different from what a lot of us think of when we think of small business. A lot of people think, “I'm a small business because I'm zero to two years.” You might not be considered a big enough business in the eyes of a big bank. You said you're trying to stay away from big banks. What are you using for your financial institutions today instead?

Ryan Lockwood (27:19)

So business-wise we were looking, we've been using Relay and we're still using the Nav card for all of our monthly subscriptions and stuff. We got rid of QuickBooks, we went to Ambrook, which is ag-based kind of QuickBooks, but for agriculture. So that's helped out a lot. So we are still using our Nav Prime card to help pay for those, just keep that consistent.

Going out, but we've kind of switched everything over to Relay and just kind of the credit unions. We've come back to the local credit union by us to drop off the money and then move it over where we need to move it over. 

Just even getting away from the big banks has helped because you just finding these small businesses and small banks that actually know your name and when you call them up… like I'll call our ag bank up and I can just talk to our loan officer or any other people there and they're like, “Hey Ryan, how are you? How's business like?” 

So it's one of those things where you kind of feel more like family and they actually care and they're asking how your business is going. Not just like, “Hey, do you have your deposit slip? Get out. Where's the next one?” You know, so just having that, family aspect of when we walk in or we call, it helps out a lot.

Catherine Giese (28:36)

Yeah, for sure. Community banks and credit unions are very popular with small business owners. And it's for exactly that reason. I would love to just have you share what's next. What's next for BCK? What are your next steps and how are you planning them out?

Ryan Lockwood (28:52)

Yeah, I mean, we're trying to expand, but we're fighting Cisco. So that's kind of been kind of the running joke or just thing between Taryn and I like, all right, how do we fight Cisco? How do we get out there because it's so easy for people to just throw in an order and get it from a warehouse, you know? 

So that's kind of… I wouldn't say a hiccup, but it's kind of been hard for us to get in because we're grow to order. So we're not just mass producing everything. So that's kind of where people are like, “Hey, I need stuff and I need it now.” And, then, it's the competition of finding something out of the warehouse versus us. 

But I mean, I think we're finally getting to the point where we're actually getting some hold, you know, and we're getting those restaurants and those people that they want local they don't want just kind of the walk into the the grocery store and you never know what's on it or in it or anything like that. 

But as far as expansion wise, you know, we have a pretty consistent shipments out to South Dakota. I'm working with one of my best friends growing up. He's still up in Colorado. His sister works for a grocer up there. So we're trying to talk to the grocery stores up in Colorado since we're kind of getting all of our shipping stuff more efficiently. So that's kind of like what we've been kind of focusing on is, if we're here now in Texas, how can we expand? Because microgreens and hydroponics are still down here in Texas, it's not a big ag. So we're fighting multiple fronts as far as that aspect goes. 

So we're trying to reach all the markets instead of just trying to stay local. We're keeping the local, but we're actually just trying to expand out of state. Finding people that we know that are, we've been able to ship to y'all and it's been great. And we've gone to the East coast and we've been able to kind of perfect that shipping aspect of it too. So we're like, you know, what can reach every corner?

We've gone up to Alaska with a couple orders. That was fun trying to figure out how to refrigerate everything up to Alaska for that. But yeah, that's kind of where we're going. We're still slowly working on the trailers. But our focus right now is how can we get out of state and how can we get our name out there more nationally.

Catherine Giese (31:23)

Yeah, that's definitely a big challenge trying to compete with the big guys. But I feel like there's a really valuable lesson in there for other people to take away, which is that you're really competing on your strengths and what makes you unique. Like you're leaning into that local touch, the fact that your family owned, friends and family, being really personal and not kind of like this nameless, faceless corporation.

Ryan Lockwood (31:50)

Yeah, it's been, it's been huge. And just the fact of having the kids involved in it too, you know, cause when we walk in, like Taryn was just talking today, like she walks in to deliver to the grocery store and the people there are like, Hey Taryn, like, how are the kids they're seeing the kids, the kids help unload. They help plant, they help everything around the house. So it's not only building our business here, it's putting that business mindset into the kids. You know, they're talking about what they want to do, what businesses they want to have when they grow up. we're bringing them into that entrepreneurial spirit too, like there's other options out there. 

So even if it's not this, which is completely fine, you know, we're not trying to wrap them all in forever. But it's just having that mindset and having them with us. I think that's helped out a lot too, because everybody sees us all walking in together, all helping. And they're like, wow, your kids have that spirit behind them and everything else too. So that's amazing in itself too, knowing that they're following that path too.

Catherine Giese (33:03)

Yeah, they really do. They're so creative and playful. They're just such a joy. But I love that. That's great. And kind of that family aspect that you bring to everything is like such a big reason why we love your business and your family. So thank you so much for sharing your story and for coming on.

Ryan Lockwood (33:24)

Of course. Thanks for sticking with us for the last couple of years. It's been amazing to stay in touch and to still grow together.

Catherine Giese (33:32)

Really our privilege and pleasure. Thank you.

Catherine Giese (33:36)

Thank you for listening. As always, every small business is unique and there's no such thing as one size fits all advice, so take only what you find helpful. We look forward to next time.