We recently connected with Natalie Kovarik and have shared our conversation below.

Natalie, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. So let’s jump to your mission – what’s the backstory behind how you developed the mission that drives your brand?

The average consumer is now three generations removed from agriculture and now more than ever questioning the environmental and health effects of how their food is grown and produced. While there are plenty of food resources on the market to choose from for information, I always felt that food/farming headlines and conversations were too often dominated by voices and opinions from outside of the ag space. This gap, often times can be filled with misinformation and so I decided to start a podcast – Discover Ag – with a friend so that we could add producer voices to the conversation.

We believe Discover Ag offers a fresh and relatable take on the ag and food space. Our mission is to pioneer conversation around relevant and trending news/topics in the ag and food space while ultimately reconnecting listeners back to the hands that feed us. We like to consider ourselves a cross between “the Toast” and “Mike Rowe” – a fun, female, millennial perspective on farming/food if you will :)

Natalie, 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 name is Natalie Kovarik and if we are being honest, I’ve always kind of struggled to write an appropriate and proper introduction about myself ha. Women are such wonderfully complex and beautiful creatures. We wear all the hats and juggle all the things that sometimes I find it hard to narrow ourselves down. But I suppose at my core I am a ranch wife, ranch mom and surprising enough, rancher myself. I live in Central Nebraska with my husband Luke and our three boys Tad, Jaks and Rue. Together we own and operate our ranch – Kovarik Cattle Co. – where I spend a majority of my days bouncing around in a Polaris ranger or out at pasture on horseback – and honestly, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

The ranching way of life has always been familiar to me. I was born and raised on a cattle ranch in SW Montana. My family has been tending to the same land where the headwaters of the Missouri River merge against the backdrop of the Rocky Mountains for over 100 years and it truly is one of my favorite places. I ended up getting my degree in Pharmacy and after graduation moved to a bigger city in Montana and worked as a full time pharmacist at a hospital/clinic. Then I met my husband. He’s a Nebraska boy through and through and like myself he grew up with ranching in his family. He was in Montana visiting our ranch for our annual bull sale – we met at the after party and I guess as the saying goes, the rest is history :)

After we got married I relocated to Nebraska and instead of going back to pharmacy I started a direct to consumer beef business with a childhood friend – and that was really my first taste of social media as a marketing tool. I stayed with the beef business for a couple years before pivoting and creating a personal brand online.

In the past 5 years of sharing online I have created a community of 140K+ , started Discover Ag the podcast, spoken on ag stages, hosted business retreats for the ag community and co founded Elevate Ag an online course for producers to learn to effectively use social media to share their story.

Have you ever had to pivot?

I started a direct to consumer beef business over 5 years ago and while I believe strongly in the mission of connecting urban consumers directly to their food and a rancher behind it, the model was no sustainable for me or my family. I struggled with the idea of pivoting to something new – mostly from an ego standpoint. But eventually decided to take a leap of faith and instead of using social media to market my beef, I used it to create a personal brand and market myself. Three years later – I turned that decision into multiple 6 figure businesses, brought more freedom and time into my life and met several impactful relationships. Pivoting can be scary, but it can also be extremely worthwhile.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

I think there have been two things that have served me well in my journey of building my online brand. One was my bravery to start something new. I wasn’t afraid to reach out to Ag brands when other people weren’t or do something different than what other people in agriculture were sharing at that time. It’s almost as if every time I saw everyone running one way, I would decide to run the exact opposite way. The other thing that served me well was my ability to focus on my own vision and not get side tracked in what others thought of it. I really put blinders on to what was outside of my core vision and just stayed true in knowing if I put in the commitment and dedication, my vision could become a reality. If you are new to sharing online, be picky about your platform you choose to share on (you don’t need to share on them all) and then go all in on it. Also remember to serve. Your content is about your community/customer, not you.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://nataliekovarik.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nataliekovarik/
• Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/natalie-kovarik-33275b257
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/natalie_kovarik
• Podcast: https://www.podpage.com/discover-ag/

Image Credits
Jean Ubben Photography and Kassidy McConville Photography