We recently connected with Stacy Meunier and have shared our conversation below.
Stacy, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?
In 2013, a trip up to the North Georgia Mountains opened up an opportunity to take over a small country store. We sold antiques, local crafts, woodwork, baked goods, and animals like chickens and rabbits. One day the man I frequently purchased chickens from came by with two baby goats and their mama. He asked if I’d like to buy them and they were so dang cute that I couldn’t resist. Customers came by to visit with the goats and many asked if they could purchase them. We acquired a few more goats as rescues and others to breed to sell. The store name changed to Happy Goat Trading Company after one of the rescue goats who was named Happy because he would wag his tail vigorously at feeding time. I kept saying “He is such a Happy little goat” and the name stuck.
The store became a tourist hot spot where people would come shop and feed the variety of animals we had. We didn’t make much at the store, but it was always buzzing with people stopping by. It seemed to be more of a hobby than a business. Just a few years in, I learned the Georgia DOT would be expanding the road and our beloved store was in their path. In 2017, the store front permanently closed down, most the animals found new homes and I kept my goats. Not too long after closing, the DOT tore down the old storefront and it sits as a vacant lot to this very day.
Since then, I have been trying to figure out how and if I could rejuvenate Happy Goat Trading Company. In the meantime, I started taking my goats out on hikes and started making youtube videos about our adventures. I have had so much positive feedback from viewers who say they’d like to go paddleboarding or hiking with one of my goats like in the videos. This put the thought in my head that maybe I could change direction with Happy Goat and start to offer events and adventures with goat companions.
One such adventure led me to a renaissance festival where I was invited to come be a vendor. This opened up the door for the store side of Happy Goat to come alive once again. New this year, we started selling some of old our in-store favorites like Hot Sauces and Apple Butters along with the newest hit – Freeze Dried Candy! At the festival we sold our products from a goat-drawn wagon which I built and trained the goats to pull. This was a hit at the festival so I applied to work other events throughout 2023.
Notes:
Our website is: https://www.happygoattradingcompany.com
You can see my goat adventures on youtube here: https://www.youtube.com/stacyalan77
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I never anticipated getting into goats. When I traveled to Georgia from Florida and found the store, I was just checking out the area at the time and planning to continue doing construction. But now I can’t really imagine not having the goats. They make great pets and very personable. One of the services I’m trying to offer through Happy Goat is animal therapy because I know how much joy they bring to my life and they have helped comfort me in some of my hardest and loneliest times.
One of the hardest set backs was moving back to Florida and trying to revive the store, I knew I didn’t have enough financial backing to rent or purchase a brick and mortar store, plus having the animals on site adds a whole new element with all the regulations here in Florida. Orlando is not quite like the back country of Georgia and there are so many more hoops to jump through in order to bring to life what I envision.
Notes: some of these were answered on the previous page.
Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?
When I first started my youtube channel, I knew it would be difficult to accrue a regular audience. However, I knew I had something to offer that no one else did. I mean, who takes their goats to explore an old abandoned cemetery on an island via paddleboard in the middle of the night? Who do you know who gives their goat a headlamp and crawls down into an old marble mine to find a lake 275 feet below the earths surface? Where else can you watch a man and his backpack toting goat find an old plane wreck up in the mountains?
I took to social media and posted my videos on sites and groups of people who liked exploring and country life. Sometimes I’d be jailed by facebook for “spamming” with how frequently I’d post my videos. Fiver also helped me in the beginning. You can use their services to have “sellers” promote your youtube channel and videos. Since then, I do believe their services aren’t as helpful as they used to be so I quit using them.
My goat videos aren’t all adventure and exploring though. I also make videos of how to care for goats. One day after uploading a video about how to treat an abscess on a goat, I checked my youtube analytics and saw it was getting massive views (massive for my channel anyway). It was over 100k views in such a short time. I hoped this was the viral video I needed to get going, but it was short lived. That experience made me realize people love to watch that kind of gross stuff so I tried to duplicate the interest in a subsequent video. In the next video, I would gather up some of my friends to do a reaction video while they watched the first video about treating an abscess on a goat. The twist was that I did not tell any of them what they would be watching AND right before the video I gave them a vanilla pudding snack pack TO EAT WHILE they watched the abscess video and then I filmed their reactions.
Another time I received a phone call from a producer out in California who saw my goat videos and asked if I could come out and have my goat perform tricks on a TV show – Stupid Pet Tricks with Sarah Silverman. I went through the video interviews and they decided to have my goat, Rocky, and I on the show. When it came time to fly us out, they decided since I did not get a vaccine, I wouldn’t be allowed on set. Now just a few weeks later, another producer who came across my videos contacted me about putting together a routine with the goats and I doing a tricks. I asked what show and she told me America’s Got Talent. I assured her we are a fun sideshow, but not TV worthy. They insisted I send a video of the routine which I did and they agreed it was lacking the AGT flair.
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
As I stated earlier, I moved to Florida and took the goats with me. I was trying to figure out ways to bring back Happy Goat Trading Company in this area. I envisioned we would have to start small because of the hurdles previously mentioned. I had the hairbrained idea to build a goat-drawn wagon and sell our product at some of the local farmers markets. I presented the idea to 5 of the big markes around and they all shot it down. They gave me reasons like they can’t have a roaming vendor and they can’t have a goat on site, etc. I knew I wasn’t in the Mountains of Georgia anymore. This just made me aware that people don’t really view goats as a pet or smart animal, but I assured them mine are trained and well behaved. It didn’t matter, I wouldn’t be allowed to have a goat at the markets. Fast forward a few years to where I brought one of my goats to a renaissance festival, I met both the owner and manager, they invited me to com back next year and work at the festival doing a sideshow featuring goat tricks. As the time grew nearer to the festival, I eventually proposed the idea to them that instead of doing a show, how about we become a vendor selling our products from a goat drawn wagon. They accepted the proposal so off I went building the wagon and getting the goats trained to pull. In the meantime, I had a visit with some friends back in Georgia who introduced me to freeze dried candy. They had me try a freeze dried milk dud and let me tell you, it was glorious! When I returned to Florida, I told a friend of mine about freeze dried candy. She said she thought it was a million dollar idea for me to sell at the ren fair and if I didn’t do it, she would steal the idea. I think it was her way of pushing me in a direction she knew I wasn’t fully confident to try. She even offered to front me the money to purchase the machine, which I took her up on. Wouldn’t you know that the freeze dried candy sold like crazy at that first festival and paid for the cost of the machine 5 fold! I since then ordered a second machine and am heading a slightly different direction than anticipated.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.happygoattradingcompany.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stacyalan/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HappyGoatTrading
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/stacyalan77