We were lucky to catch up with Tess Leach recently and have shared our conversation below.

Tess, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?

Our mission is to bring harmony back to our relationship with the natural world. This means something different to everyone, but for me it’s about how to perpetuate ranching into the future as we see it as the tool by which to achieve our mission. For me personally, I am passionate about this so that I can leave a healthy physical place behind for my kids, and hopefully for a larger group of people, too.

Tess, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

My family has a ranching company called Ranchlands, and for the past 25 years have managed large scale ranches across the west, working with landowners to help them achieve conservation and lifestyle goals on their properties. In addition, we have a robust marketing program that promotes ranching as a compelling solution to large scale conservation, and invites people to come and join us on our ranches for a trip, and to learn more about working with the land. We have been welcoming guests for about 20 years from around the world, as well as offering for sale leather goods that we make, meat that we raise, and other items from brands that resonate with us.

I joined Ranchlands in 2009 working in a hospitality role, and ended up running a lodge that we manage for the following 5 years. Once I had my first son, I moved back to the ranch that I grew up on, and started managing our hospitality operations remotely, as well as an online Mercantile and other brand development efforts.

Have you ever had to pivot?

Maybe it’s a cop out at this point….but covid! We went into March 2020 with calendar of bookings and had to cancel all of them and give full refunds or credits to everyone of them. We were able to secure funding to keep our staff on, and used this time to tackle some much needed projects around the lodge, as well as launch our online Mercantile in a much more thoughtful way. 3.5 months later when we were able to open the doors again, we were 100% booked right out of the gates, and have pretty much been that way ever since. Our Mercantile is also continuing to grow, much thanks to this extra bit of effort.

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

Education has always been central to our mission as we see people as the only way that ranching will survive into the future. The difference between urban and rural communities is so significant– almost like two different worlds– that communicating the realities of what we’re doing to the urban majority, and engaging them in it, has been central to what we’re doing. We joined Instagram about 10 years ago as an extension of our blog, which we had been doing for about 10 years prior. We use social media as an extension of who we are, a way to give people a snapshot of what we are doing, not glorified or dramatized. We are very intentional about our messaging and keep it educational, not preachy or too personal. We’re also lucky to have amazing content to work with and just an inherently romantic story to tell, but a lot of thought goes into how we tell it.

Contact Info:

• Website: ranchlands.com
• Instagram: @ranchlands.com
• Facebook: /ranchlands
• Youtube: Ranchlands

Image Credits
Parker Fitzgerald and Elliot Ross