We recently connected with Leah Lynch and have shared our conversation below.

Leah , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Let’s start with what makes profitability in your industry a challenge – what would you say is the biggest challenge?

The biggest challenge that people face in the homesteading or backyard farming industry is their emotions. It’s so easy to get caught up in the beauty of what you create or the cuteness of the livestock that you lose sight of this being a true business.

There is one side where they want it to be self-sustaining but they want to bring the entire truckload of heart and feelings into it and that is a setup for an emotional roller coaster that causes people to quit in a few years.

It takes practice to learn to put that wall up and have what I call enjoyment without attachment. But it can be done if you have CLEAR goals and a destination set out in front of you.

Leah , before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

My first real stab at business started all the way back in 2009 when I was 17 just finishing highschool… I had rabbits since I was 5 years old and at this point in time I had gotten my first few French lop rabbits and was starting to test the waters of the online world. I had created a Facebook page and a free website hoping to get the rabbitry to pay for itself. I had not taken any online courses about how to do anything involving business but I was trying to make a go of it.

After about a year I was starting to sell all of the rabbits in each litter pretty quickly. Then the next year the emails got to be more frequent and then it got to the point of people asking about having rabbits during the off seasons when I wasn’t having litters. Then I got this great idea of taking their info and offering to reach out when I did have litters born and rabbits available. Ultimately creating my first waiting list.

It started to become the joke in my family that my rabbits were my college fund and a few years later that’s exactly what it became. The rabbits paid for my schooling and I graduated with my two-year degree debt free.

Today the rabbits make me multiple four figures a year and people are paying their deposits ahead of time to be on my waiting list. It is such a blessing and a beautiful thing to have people trust me enough to do so.

Now use what I learned and the strategies I use to help other people create a country lifestyle that doesn’t leave them broke and burnt out. Providing online courses and Ebooks to help them generate income from their backyard farms and also how to be strategic with their time which also feeds into their business and backyard farm strategy.

What’s worked well for you in terms of a source for new clients?

One strategy that I have always taken is I want the majority of my time to go into marketing that will work for me while I am not working.

On top of that, I live in a rural area where we can’t get home internet. So everything I do is from my cell phone internet being used as a hotspot. While it’s “unlimited” they do throttle it after so many gigs of usage and so I have to get the most bang for my internet….

That being said, God bless social media but it is a beast that needs to be continually fed….

I have always taken an interest in websites and blogging and I can truly say that investing my time in learning SEO and creating blog content that gets found in search and making sure my website gets found in search has been the best thing I have done to grow my business that also helps me stand out from everyone else.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

100% it was looking at what others were doing and doing the complete opposite. This is hilarious coming from a girl who is a total introvert and would be totally fine only coming off her little one-acre farm only to get groceries.

Early on it looked like having a website when others didn’t. Then when people started doing that I would make sure that my website was far more educational than other people’s. Once homestead-style blogs were a thing I started making sure my design was more classy and higher-end than anything else I saw.

Now is things like having a scheduling tool that people can use to schedule their livestock pickups instead of going back and forth through Messenger. Or simply responding to questions in full detail that I know people will never buy from me.

I do have clean boundaries about the times and days of the week I will respond but if it’s within those hours or days people will get a response from me within a reasonable amount of time.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://leah-lynch.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/leahlynchblog/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leahlynchblog
• Youtube: http://youtube.com/leahlynchblog

Image Credits
These were all taken by myself.