Everything is Teachable Podcast: Deborah Niemann, Thrifty Homesteader

Where to find Deborah

Website: thriftyhomesteader.com
Courses: thriftyhomesteader.teachable.com
Facebook: facebook.com/thriftyhomesteader
Instagram: instagram.com/thriftyhomesteader
Pinterest: pinterest.com/deborahwrites
YouTube: youtube.com/deborahniemann

Read the full transcript below.

Melissa Guller: In 2002 Deborah Neiman and her family moved to a farm on a Creek in the middle of nowhere to start growing their own food organically. She bought a couple of goats so she could make goat cheese, but from those humble beginnings, Deborah had no idea that her decision would lead her down a path where she would ultimately teach thousands of people how to raise goats and make goat cheese and soap online. Let’s learn how she did it. As Deborah joins us in today’s episode of Everything is Teachable.

Announcer: Welcome to Everything is Teachable, the podcast that takes you behind the scenes to learn how everyday creators have transformed their skills and passions into online courses and businesses. To introduce this week’s episode, here’s your host, Melissa Guller.

Melissa Guller: Hey everyone. I’m Melissa from Team Teachable and today I’m here with Deborah Neiman from the Thrifty Homesteader. Deborah is a homesteader, writer, and self-sufficiency expert who presents and teaches extensively on topics such as soap making, cheese making, livestock, composting, and homeschooling. She and her family raised sheep, pigs, cattle, goats, chickens and turkeys for meat, eggs, and dairy products while an organic garden and orchard provide fruit and vegetables. Deborah is the author of three books, including Raising Goats Naturally, and she teaches sustainable agriculture courses online for the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. She also teaches her own popular online courses through her website, ThriftyHomesteader.com, where the focus is on living a cheaper, greener, happier, healthier life for everyone.

Melissa Guller: Deborah, I’m so excited to welcome you to the podcast!

Deborah Niemann: Thanks! I’m really excited to be here.

Melissa Guller: So what did your lifestyle look like when you were growing up? Was it always what it looks like today?

Deborah Niemann: Nope, not at all. The only thing that might’ve given somebody a clue that I might be headed in this direction is that we did always have animals. We had backyard chickens when I was growing up and I remember visiting my grandparents a lot and I loved visiting my grandmother and I think one of the early experiences with her is something that probably really kind of set the stage for me. And that was that they had a milk cow and I helped her make butter one time. So that kind of taught me that like everything that’s in the store came from else. Like it used to be something else, like it didn’t just magically appear in the store. And so that led me to ask all kinds of questions like, you know, how do you make peanut butter and how do you make cheese and how do you make all these things that most people just take for granted?

Melissa Guller: That’s fun to kind of have that curiosity as a kid and to ask questions like that. I’m not sure if you hadn’t seen it, like I certainly don’t think I would’ve thought to ask where peanut butter comes from as a kid. I’m like, Oh, it comes from the jar. Right. And then so as you’re a kid though, I know you mentioned being kind of around the churning butter and maybe a few animals, but what did your like health and diet look like and the way that you just kind of lived day to day?

Deborah Niemann: I grew up eating tons of junk food and fast food and convenience food because my mother felt like she had really been liberated from the kitchen by modern products. And so I, you know, I frozen pizza and canned ravioli and this kind of stuff and I was sick all the time and I was constantly being taken to the doctor and my mother would get so frustrated and the doctor said, you know, all some kids are just sickly. There’s nothing we can do about it. Because she asked him one time, she’s like, can’t we do something about her being sick all the time? And he said, no, there’s nothing you can do about it. And then when I got pregnant with my first child, I heard about the connection between your diet and your health. And that was like this huge Eureka moment for me. Like I had never heard that before and I thought, wow.

Deborah Niemann: So maybe if our diet is different than my children won’t be sick all the time like I was. And I was really excited when that happened. You know, like we cleaned up our diet, I started reading labels. I was really upset to discover that there were no blueberries in my blueberry muffins, like artificial colors, artificial flavors, and all this stuff. And so, you know, blueberry muffins are not health food by anybody’s definition, but I started making them from scratch so at least they had real blueberries in them and not all this artificial stuff. And after our children, we did have children. I, they were so healthy, like they weren’t sick. And I really mean that. Like, I just couldn’t believe how healthy they were. You know, if they would sometimes like say you know that they’ve got a sore throat, I, you know, said, well why don’t you lay down for a little bit and see how you feel when you wake up and they would feel better.

Deborah Niemann: And I can tell you. So my youngest child actually never had antibiotics until she was a teenager when she, and then she had to have him cause she got bitten by a cat and like my son had antibiotics once when he had an abscess tooth, you know, so I mean it was just so stunningly different to look at me who was in the doctor’s office like every month, taking antibiotics multiple times a year compared to my children who were healthy. And then the really good thing was when they went off to college, they knew when they would eat junk food and stuff. Like they started getting sick more when they were in college and even things like stomach upsets and things from some of the food that they would choose to eat when they went out to eat. So it was really dramatic.

Melissa Guller: Yeah. It’s interesting too to hear you point out that nobody would argue that blueberry muffins are health foods, but then making them with real foods as opposed to something artificial. Like that was the difference as opposed to, I know there are so many conversations about sugars, fats, I mean just you can split hairs on every type of health these days, but to your point, things that are artificial are much different than things that are grown or that are natural.

Deborah Niemann: Yeah, exactly. And your body just doesn’t know what to do with all of that artificial stuff because throughout time it’s never had to figure out what did it well, what is my body? What am I supposed to do with sodium? Carboxy methylcellulose you know, and it didn’t sound good at all. Now if you look on a label, one of the talks I do, I asked people to raise their hand and tell me how many ingredients they think are in ’em KFCs mashed potatoes. And you know, the answer is like it’s over 27 Oh my gosh. And it’s the same thing with like their biscuits and, and the thing is if you make these things at home, like you can make biscuits with five ingredients, you can make gravy with five ingredients. And so they’re using a lot of stuff in there that human bodies have never had to deal with.

Deborah Niemann: And some of our bodies handle it better than others. And apparently my body was one that did not handle it very well and I was used to be frustrating to me. Now I think, wow, I’m lucky my body is smart. It forced me to stop eating that stuff and to eat the more natural foods. And that was basically what led us to wanting to move to the country because in the 90s the only place you could get natural food was like in health food stores. So we decided we wanted to move out to the country to start growing our own food organically. And it took us a long time. Like we talked about it for nine years before we actually did it. And then finally in 2002 we did. And so we got, you know, chickens, goats, cows, sheep, pigs, garden, fruit trees. I kind of thought we needed to do it all.

Melissa Guller: Yeah. So once you did move, how did that, obviously it would affect your family’s lifestyle, your income. I mean, what did that new world look like for you guys?

Deborah Niemann: My husband continued to teach college and so he had a one hour commute at that point, but the children and I were all at home all the time doing all this really cool stuff. And so you know, the point of getting the goats and the cows was to make our own cheese and dairy products and the cows proved to be really, we’ve got Irish dusters, which are the smallest breed of cattle, but it occurred to me pretty quickly that it really didn’t matter whether a cow weighed 600 pounds or 1200 pounds either one was way more than what I went and I really wasn’t going to have a lot more luck dealing with a 600 pound cow than I would have. She weighed 1200 pounds. That makes sense. The goats just proved to be so much easier in terms of handling, especially cause we had Nigerian dwarfs which only weigh about 60 pounds when fully grown.

Deborah Niemann: And I kind of feel like they have a natural advantage in a way since they have four legs so they have way better stability. So you know, if I weigh twice as much as they do, that puts us, that makes us even, you know, they have twice as many legs. I have twice as many pounds. So I feel like we’re pretty evenly matched. And then we had all kinds of problems. So the first year or two was okay, but after that I had goats that wouldn’t get pregnant. Goats that wouldn’t stay pregnant, they would abort at like all different stages of pregnancy. Like we had little tiny toothpick babies born, you know, like at four months really. Like there was no way they could survive cause they were just these tiny little little babies that were way too premature and none of the vets knew what was going on.

Deborah Niemann: I talked to a lot of them and my oldest daughter back then was in her mid teens and she thought she wanted to be a vet. And so she started doing a bunch of reading and research and stuff. And she said, mom, I think our goats are copper deficient. So I started calling vets and saying, yeah, we think we have goats that are copper deficient. Can you give us prescription copper? And they all said no, because copper deficiency is not a thing. Like that’s impossible. And, but I would say, well, this is what we read and these are the symptoms, you know? And they would just say no. And so I called four different vets and they also the same thing. And then finally one day I had a goat that died and I said, I want to have her liver tested for copper and the vet side, you’re wasting your money.

Deborah Niemann: She’s not copper deficient. And I said, fine, it’s my money. Like I want to. Because the liver test is the only really accurate tests for that. And so he sent her liver in and her copper levels should have been between 25 and 150 and hers was fuller. Wow. Single digit four. No wonder. Yeah, I mean it was a miracle she lived as long as she did. Being that low. Later I had a buck dye who I realized was copper deficiency and his was actually 14 so I mean like he died when it was not even anywhere close to as low as hers. So then I just, I figured out how to get over the counter cattle copper in boluses, which are like these giant pills. If you’ve ever heard times may say something like that’s a horse pill, will a cow pill is like the size of your thumb?

Deborah Niemann: Like it’s huge. My gosh. Well I would rip them open and then redistribute the copper into goat size doses so I could give it to my goats. The next year, all of our goats got pregnant. They stayed pregnant, they gave birth to healthy kids. It was incredible what a difference it was. And that was like around 2005 or around 2006 or seven. And today, like copper deficiency is a recognized problem on goads and they actually sell goat sized pills for it that over the counter. So we’ve come a long way in all that time a lot. But a lot of people still don’t know. In fact, we have had interns and we had an intern a few years ago that was a pre vet major and when I talked about giving copper to my goats, she was like, goats can be copper deficient. And I was like, you haven’t learned that in school. And she said, no, they told us that copper could be toxic. And I’m like, Oh my goodness, we still have so far to go.

Melissa Guller: Wow. That must’ve been such a frustrating experience overall to have so many doctors, like you said, saying, no, this isn’t real. And having to really like prove that your research idea was valid. Yeah, exactly. So I know you have, I don’t want to spoil the plot of some of your online courses about goats, but going back in time before we even hit that point, once you did start to have healthy kids, I know you also kind of expanded your homesteading skills. So how did you kind of develop your own interests and passions once you guys had moved out there? Well,

Deborah Niemann: Like I said, I wanted to know how to make cheese. So I started making cheese and ultimately we wound up making, we’ve made 18 different kinds of cheese. So we were, we’ve been making all of our own cheese for a really long time and we’ll learn how to make goat milk. So, and basically today we produce 100% of all of our meat. We were vegetarians before we moved out here mostly because I didn’t like the way that factory farm animals were treated. And it also affects their health, which means it affects your health because when they’re being fed grain, which like cattle being fed grain is not natural cause they’re ruminants, they, they can be totally grass fed. And when they’re grain fed, it throws off the Omega three Omega six balance and takes what should be a healthy meat and turns it into an unhealthy meat.

Deborah Niemann: So it’s not the amount of fat, like everybody’s like, Oh, fats evil. But it’s the type of fat like omega-3 is what we need. So like all of our sheep and cattle are completely grass fed so that they do have that better, that higher level of a mega that we all need more of. And less of the Omega six, which we don’t need more of because we’re all consuming way too much. And mega six, I want, I’m getting certified as a health coach because I wanted to learn more about all of this, like other than just anecdotally and kind of like, and I hope that like, well, if I learn more about how all this works, people will take me more seriously. When I talk about your health issues, that makes sense. And so once you got certified, what did you start doing next?

Deborah Niemann: Well, even before I got certified, I, people would contact me and say, Hey, I heard you know, how to make cheese. Can you teach me how to make cheese? And I’d say, sure, come on over. And so we had people coming over like couple times a month and I, you know, I would be doing these totally free private classes, teaching people how to make cheese and soap and take care of their goats and stuff. And then it finally occurred to me that this was taking a lot of time and that I should start offering classes. So I created a schedule and started charging so that people would come over to the farm and learn how to make different types of cheese and soap and raise their goats. And then people started contacting me and saying, Hey, could you come and do a presentation on this for our group?

Deborah Niemann: But there was like a master gardeners, you know, who thought this would be fun to learn or like extension offices, a magazine, a natural magazine in Chicago asked me to come speak at one of their events. And so then when the mother earth news fair first happened in 2010, they sent out a call for speakers and I was like, Oh, I should do this. And so I sent in multiple speaker proposals because there was all this different, that stuff I was teaching at the time. Also bread baking. Cause we were, we were baking bread every day from scratch. And so that’s how I got to speak at the very first mother earth news fair in Pennsylvania in 2010. And that was where my publisher discovered me. So I was just about to walk into this room that was literally standing room only. Like every single seat was taken.

Deborah Niemann: People were standing like lining the walls. They were even like sitting behind the podium on the floor. And I was about to have a panic attack because I had never spoken in front of that many people before. And then this woman walks up to me and says, hi, I don’t mean to ambush you. I know you’re about to go in there and speak, but my name is Heather. I’m from new society publishers. Here’s my card. I’d like to talk to you about writing a book. And I was just like, Oh my goodness. Okay. She’s like, I know you’ve got to go speak now. So I just wanna make sure we could connect before the conference is over. So just send me a text and we can set up a time. So I, so at that point I’m like, okay, I’ve got to completely forget that.

Deborah Niemann: Like this really awesome dream. It looks like it’s about to come true. And I have to go in there and tell everybody how to bake bread now. And so that’s how I started writing books. My first book, homegrown in handmade was published in 2010 I published a second edition of that in 2016 and then I published eco thrifty, cheaper, greener choices for a happier, healthier life. In 2011 or no, 2011 was the first book. Then 2012 2013 they published raising goats naturally. And then last year in 2018 I published a second edition of raising goats naturally. So, and then the go thing, I think the goats just basically kind of bubbled up to the top as being my passion. Like the other animals are good. You know, like the only reason we have pork is cause I love bacon.

Deborah Niemann: Pigs are nice and you know everything. But I don’t know if it’s because I had to work so hard to make it work with the goats, like if we had so many problems or because they’re such personable animals or what, but somehow they just totally stole my heart. And I wound up, you know, really falling in love with them and doing tons of research on them. I mean, like we’ve had most of these other animals for just as long as we’ve had goats. But like my knowledge of chickens and pigs and sheep is, you know, like maybe 20% of what my knowledge on goats is. And honestly, the other ones are just super simple for me. Like I haven’t had any challenges with chickens, you know, or the pigs or the sheep.

Melissa Guller: Yeah, I think that’s a great point that because you had to really fight for some hard earned knowledge about how to raise your own goats. I could see how that would both elevate your passion for it, but also give you maybe a feeling of, Oh, like I figured this out, I know how to do this and maybe I want to share this knowledge with more people.

Deborah Niemann: Right. And it’s really sad when I see other people having challenges that are, that I know they can overcome. So I like helping people with that. Yeah. So we’ve talked about the books. When did your blog come into the picture? I had been blogging for a really long time. I actually, I think I counted one time, I’ve had over a dozen different blogs, but only two that I really, really got passionate about, which, and I think that’s a really cool thing about blogs. It’s a super easy way for somebody to figure out how passionate they are about a topic. Because you know, a lot of those other blogs, it’s like I started on them and I thought, Oh, I’m really passionate about this. And then I just completely forgot about them after, you know, a few weeks or a few months. But the one that I stuck with, one from 2006 to 2016 and that was my farm diary.

Deborah Niemann: I loved sharing with people basically what was going on here. And so like I chronicled all of the births and anything that happened, like all of my, my cheese making miss halves, how I failed at stuff and when I succeeded. So that was really fun. And then when the first book came out in 2011 I felt like I needed to have a blog that was all about how to do this stuff. You know, like the farm blog was just, it was a diary. And so this one was all about how to, it was going to be a DIY blog, but a DIY blog on steroids. You know, not just here’s how you make a homemade pizza, but here’s how you make the crust, make your tomato sauce from the tomatoes in your garden, you know, where you grew them, and make your cheese that came from the milk that came from the goat that you’re, you’re raising and milking and all of that. And so that’s, that’s when it started. So that one, so Thrifty Homesteader started in 2011 and, and that’s where it’s been going. It’s been going there ever since. And I love it when you said the book came out as well, right? Yeah, the first book came out in 2011. And now the blog is up to like 450 articles. I actually, it was over 500 and I actually went through there recently and deleted a bunch of them that I just didn’t think were very good.

Melissa Guller: I think that’s a great point too, that as you’ve published more information, probably the ability to pick and choose what is still relevant and still helpful is a smart move. And I loved what you said earlier too. Just to go back for a second. The advice about testing, how passionate you are about something by blogging and to see, you know, are you interested to continue coming back and writing about something and is that fun for you? That’s such an easy like low barrier to entry. Not too expensive way to just kind of test the waters on something. Exactly. [inaudible] so 2011 the blog is happening, the books are happening. How did things start to evolve from there into, I know where you are now, which is that you’re also teaching online in addition to what you were doing in person. Well,

Deborah Niemann: I was a writer and so my big dream was always to get a book deal and I was living in this really old paradigm where I thought you have a blog, you get discovered, you write books, you get rich and live happily ever after. And it doesn’t really work like that. So I ha, I thought I was doing it all right. I had the blog, I got discovered, I got the book deal, I wrote the book. I was so excited. I’m like, I earned back my advance right away. But the traditional royalty on a book is about 10% of wholesale. So that means that on a $20 book you’re gonna make a dollar. So like it’s super exciting. Like Oh my gosh, my book sold 5,000 coffees, but all I made was $5,000 and that was like for spending three months of 14 hour days in front of a computer, including Thanksgiving, Christmas and new year’s. So you get that book written as w and then add to that a couple of months of editing and it’s only $5,000 when you sell 5,000 copies.

Melissa Guller: And yeah, that amount of time that you put in, I’m sure if you broke down what that hourly rate might have been for all that hard work, it’s maybe a disappointing number in the end.

Deborah Niemann: Yeah. So like my publisher was super excited because they’re like, Oh my gosh, like cause the first print run raise $5,000 and that sold out like in 10 or 11 months. So it’s like $5,000 a year. Woo.

Melissa Guller: [Inaudible] It’s still exciting to like the having not many books sold and imagining the number of people reading the book and the impact, that’s still huge. But at the same time, you want to get paid for this knowledge that you have.

Deborah Niemann: Exactly. And so at that point, I had already signed contracts through book three to do a book a year. And so I continued with the other books. And, and because I love writing, I love sharing the knowledge, you know, and yeah, it’s exciting that thousands of people buy the books, but at the same time, in the back of my head, I was just like, I, the people make the people working at McDonald’s are making more money than I am. Oh wow. That’s a pretty harsh reality to face. Right, exactly. And so I started thinking like, there’s gotta be a way that I can make like make a living at this, you know, because this is not it all. And then I don’t even know how I learned about the online courses, but thank goodness I’m how I discovered the world of online courses and thought I could make this looks like I could make more money at this.

Deborah Niemann: And then luckily right around that time when I was thinking, what am I gonna do? Cause I’ve been telling people for months, cause every time I would put it on Facebook that I have another on-farm class, somebody would say, you need to do this online so that, those are some of those of us who can’t come to your farm can get these classes. So I’ve been telling people for like a year, like I’m working on an online class. So I was surfing online one day and I saw something about Teachable and I don’t know who this guy is. I’m sorry, I wish I did. But he had a free course about creating a course in Teachable. And it was great. Like I signed up, I watched it and I’m like, Oh my gosh, that looks so easy. And so I went and I signed up for the free plan and I started, I basically made out, I outlined my book, I made PowerPoints and then I started doing lectures using I movie on my Mac.

Deborah Niemann: I started doing lectures on the, with the PowerPoints that I created. And after seven hours of video I realized that like that one book was way more than a class. And then there was so much information that I could get into this than what people were even getting on my farm. Like the farm is cool cause people are hands on, they can touch the goats and stuff and, and do stuff. But when you’re out there walking around talking, you forget a lot of stuff. You know, like I would always be frustrated like, Oh I should have told her about this and this and I’m like, hold it. Like we went over time, you know.

Melissa Guller: [Inaudible] That was interesting because when you teach online you have the ability to, you know, still prep for a class the way that I’m sure you did for the in person. But then if you forget something, you can add something in later, whether it’s a little text description, whether it’s an additional short video, you kind of have that option to be a little bit flexible.

Deborah Niemann: Right, exactly. So I just, I loved being able to put together the course on Teachable, so, and so I finally got it out there to the world. So I started with the free plan and then took me six months to get the course all put together. And then as soon as I was ready to go live, you guys did did some kind of a promotion or something for the pro plan. And I was like, Oh, perfect timing. And it included like, I think an hour or two or free onboarding, which I’m like, Oh, perfect. So if I, you know, have any questions or whatever, I can get on zoom or whatever service it was, you know, but I never needed it like it, I found it really easy and intuitive, so it worked great. And, and I still add stuff. And so now I’ve got so go to one Oh one was the course I created.

Deborah Niemann: And then the second course actually that I did was a free course. And that was meant to drive people to my funnel. And when I was trying to decide what to do for a free course, I am kind of embarrassed to admit now that my original idea is that I was going to just pull the housing information out of my goats one Oh one and put that out there. And now I realized how insanely boring that would have been in that. Like nobody would’ve said, look for that. But luckily before I had a chance to make that huge mistake, I saw somebody somewhere said look at what your readers and followers really need and want. And so I went into my blog stats and said, okay, what is my number one post? And it was my post about copper deficiency and goats. And I thought, wow, that’s kind of crazy.

Deborah Niemann: Copper deficiency. And then I, and then I looked at like my Facebook stats and saw that like every single time I posted anything about copper, that the reach would go beyond 100%. Sometimes it would go 200%, 300%. Like people were really passionate about this topic. And so it kind of seemed crazy even to me. But I’m like, all right, well I’m gonna put together a course on copper deficiency and I a talk, like I’d been asked to speak at conferences on copper deficiency. So I had a, I had a PowerPoint, so I just created a 30 minute lecture on it. And then I added I think like about a seven minute video where I’m like with a goat, like, you know, explaining stuff about the goat and copper deficiency and how to give copper to a goat. And then another video that is like less than a minute about the importance of free choice minerals.

Deborah Niemann: And then I copied some blog posts and put them in PDF form with my logo on them so that people could print stuff out to read blog posts about copper. That was, that was the free course. And I threw it out there and I got up like the first day cause I had like all my notifications on, you know, for taking, I get up the next day and like, you know, in my, in my Gmail, my thrifty homes that are in Gmail, I have 150 or a hundred emails per page. Every single one was, you know, you have a news, you have a new course sign up. Do you have a new course then? Have you ever, you of course, I’m like paging through it. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Oh my God. There were like several hundred people find out with an hour. Yeah, it really was. And so I immediately went in and I turned off the automatic.

Melissa Guller: You did a lot of really smart things. One of them is seeing what your audience was interested in. I mean, like you said, that advice about see which blog post is the most popular or see what social content you’ve posted that people are really responding to. That’s such a smart approach because then as is evident by your many notifications of the day this was released, you know, it’s something that people will

Deborah Niemann: [Inaudible].

Melissa Guller: And then the other thing you did is that you used content you already had, so you said you had this talk, you had different blog posts and so you were able to create something free that wasn’t totally new to you. So that’s a good use of your resources and your time to,

Deborah Niemann: Yeah. So after that so within the first week it was about a thousand people had signed up for it. Oh my gosh, that’s so exciting. And now at this point, over over 3000 people have signed up for it. And where is people finding you? Do you know how you’re attracting people to your world? I’m not sure. So some of them come through my blog cause I’ve got three posts on there now about copper deficiency and copper toxicity. And on each of those, like there’s a link to the free copper course. It’s like to learn more about copper. You can take my free course and a lot of it is through social media sharing. Whenever I actually like once a month now I share on my Facebook page. If you want to know more about copper deficiency, check out this free course and, and then every now and then I think somebody just shares it in a group or something because all of a sudden I’ll see like a dozen new signups one day.

Melissa Guller: And once people do sign up for that free course. I know you mentioned the word funnel, but maybe for people who aren’t familiar with the word funnel or what that might mean, what happens when a student signs up for your free course? What happens after that?

Deborah Niemann: They get an email welcoming them to the course and explaining why I have it and why I’m doing it for free, you know, because basically we had all these problems and nobody else should have to have those problems and learn things the hard way like we did. And there’s early signs of copper deficiency that you can deal with before you’ve got goats dying. Cause like we never had a buck lived past the age of three for the first five years we had goats and it was, and now I look back on pictures of those goats and I’m like, Oh my gosh, I could look at the pictures and know they’re copper deficient. So I don’t want anybody else to have to learn this like we did. And so that’s in my first email. And then also that, you know, I tell them like over the next couple of weeks I’m going to send you some more information that will help you raising your goats.

Deborah Niemann: And so I send them information about with links to my blog posts, so about parasites, about having barn cats and how have you have barn cats. They can cause your goats to a board because it talks so plasmosis so like what you need to look for. Like you can have barn cats, but this is the information you’d have in that kind of stuff. So it’s about seven or eight different articles that I send them for stuff that I think will be really helpful to them. It’s like stuff that they need to know. And then I also offer them the opportunity to purchase goats one-on-one in there. And then if they do, they get I include a 25% off coupon code for them if they want to purchase goats one Oh one

Melissa Guller: [Inaudible]. So you get them at first a just information about your free course, other information that comes from your blog. That’s a great way to build a relationship with somebody. I think there’s this big, maybe a misconception that you should go right in for a hard seller. If you can trick somebody into signing up for your email list, then you should just push products or online courses on them. But your approach makes so much more sense because you get to really teach them and be truly helpful. And then if they enjoy the way that you teach, it’ll feel like a no brainer, I’m sure for them to buy your course and be excited about learning more.

Deborah Niemann: Right. And I know a lot of people are afraid of people like buy a core is consuming all the content and then asking for a refund. And in my experience that has never happened. And this is actually the case. I think I just saw a statistic the other day that said something like four out of five people aren’t even gonna finish your course, which is really depressing to me. So one of the things I have now in goats, one Oh one when they sign up for that, one of the things I send them is I say, I really want you to finish this course because you need this information and to make sure that happens. You can sign up here, but if you click here, I will send you an email every week asking you how you’re doing. And I really want to know and lot of

Melissa Guller: People can tell how sincere that is too. That’s so, you know, above and beyond, I think for what a lot of online courses do. I don’t know the exact stat, but I know you’re right. It is true that a lot of people don’t finish online courses. And it is a shame because there’s so much great knowledge in there and I’m sure everyone’s reasons are valid. I mean time is hard to come by. I’m sure they buy courses with really good intentions and then maybe don’t see it through to the end. But I love the accountability where the reminders a little tap on the shoulder that you’re still there and that you care about them.

Deborah Niemann: Yeah. And people like that. And people will respond. They’ll like, they’ll, they’ll respond to those emails sometimes and say, Oh I, and sometimes once in awhile somebody, like after a couple of weeks they will say, I’m done. And I’m like, Oh my God, congratulations. That’s so awesome. And then I just go into convert kit and I turn off, turn off that sequence for them. But I’ve only had to do that like four or five times. I mean, it just happens so seldom because most people are not that on the ball, you know? Most of the time it’s like, Oh, I’m so glad you’re sending me these emails because I’ve had been really busy, but I’m going to work on it this week. You know, I want to get caught up.

Melissa Guller: [Inaudible]. I think probably maybe listeners who are either considering creating something online or just taking online courses of their own. It is really hard to find the time either to build something or to consume something, but the hard work often pays off, whether it’s you making your own online course and then getting to share it with students who tell them, who tell you rather that they’re done, which is so exciting. Or if it’s you and you’re taking a course and then you get the satisfaction of learning something in the end, it’s definitely not easy, doesn’t necessarily happen overnight, but then the new knowledge or the new course you can share it is so worth it. It is hard though, the timing. I think that’s one of the number one things that Teachable, when we hear about people who are, you know, not maybe finding success that they want with their course or with anything that they’re trying to create online. One of the biggest reasons is that they didn’t have enough time.

Deborah Niemann: Right. And then if they don’t get around to finishing this one, they’re not going to buy your next course even though they’re going, Oh my gosh, I could really use this information. But I haven’t even finished the last course that I bought. Yeah

Melissa Guller: And that’s a smart thing to cause. Your current students I’m sure are the ones who might be the most excited about new courses from you.

Deborah Niemann: Exactly. And one of the things I want to do in the future, cause I just also thank you to whoever originally said, if you’re not embarrassed by the first course you create, you waited too long to launch. Yes, because I am now, I’m just, there’s so much about goats, one Oh one that I’m like I need to change. And one of the things is that I have got all of these half hour lectures in there and so I really want to spend time next year completely revamping it and turning it into smaller chunks. Figure out where I can break it up smaller because I’ve, I’ve read it, I’ve heard other people say this and I know from my own experience if I see like when I’m taking an online course, if I see the next video is 10 minutes, I’m like, okay, I’ve got 10 minutes. I can watch that. It’s an ex video is half an hour. I am much less likely to watch that unless I’m going to, I’m about to go get on my treadmill for half an hour.

Melissa Guller: That’s a great point. I think a lot of people like to learn in smaller chunks and like you said, 10 minutes feels so attainable. I’m like, I’ve got 10 minutes. I could do it now, and so having an online course that’s broken up into those smaller chunks could really help people feel like, okay, I can do this. I can just do one more little section.

Deborah Niemann: Right. Plus it’s also going to be more helpful for people if they’ve got some kind of a problem in the future and they’re like, Oh, I think the answer to that is in this lecture, but it’s a half an hour lecture, you know, so they’re going to have to be jumping around in it. Whereas if I can figure out logical breaking points and put things into smaller bundles, into smaller videos, then somebody’s got a problem, they can go watch a five or 10 minute video that helps them with that problem that they have right there.

Melissa Guller: [Inaudible] That’s great advice. We talk about that a little bit too in Teachable you, which is our online training program for course graders that if you look down the outline of your course or if you look at all the individual sections, it should almost be like a bookmark guide or a reference guide. So if somebody has one specific question and they want to go back and find it in the course, they should be able to because each individual video or each little lesson is like one major takeaway. And then it’s just like a table of contents that they can easily go back and find what they’re looking for. Exactly. That’s much harder in a 30 minute, half an hour chunk. Cause then is it at the five minute Mark, is it the 25 minute Mark?

Deborah Niemann: Right. Yeah, exactly. And I think, cause I’ve heard people say before, I have no experience teaching, but I think that actually hurt me. You know the fact that like I have taught in a university setting and I’m like well I’m used to lecturing for 50 minutes. I felt like going down to 30 minutes was, you know, a major concession. But now I realize like no, you really do need to have a lot of little videos rather than just these big long lectures

Melissa Guller: [Inaudible] as a teacher or somebody teaching online. Also, I think at least for me the thought of creating a five minute video is a lot less intimidating than making a 30 minute video. So I think it’s helpful for everyone and helpful for the student and helpful for the greater, yeah, exactly. So I think that was a good maybe misconception. You said people who have no teaching experience still absolutely can share really great knowledge online. Do you think there are any other misconceptions people have about maybe your business or just you know, earning money online in general?

Deborah Niemann: One of the things that I’ve seen before I’m like on the Teachable group is that it looks, is it people aren’t, they don’t have an audience yet, so they don’t really know what their customer wants. You know, like they’ve got an idea and there’s they, they want to put this class out there because it’s interesting to them and they feel like it could be helpful to people, but they haven’t really talked to anybody or they don’t have, they don’t have the blog yet or they don’t have the Facebook page to be building that audience and understanding exactly what people want and exactly what people are looking for. And that’s really important.

Melissa Guller: Yeah, and a lot of ways it’s not about you. The whole point is that you’re sharing information with other people and certainly it should be something that you have a passion for, something that you’re interested in. But I think that’s a great point about, you know, thinking about the audience and what the audience needs and if it’s not online course first, maybe how do you recommend that people would get started? We talked a little bit about blogging before.

Deborah Niemann: There are a lot of people that talk about getting started with a Facebook group. You know that that’s a good place to find people with whatever interest, whatever topic you’re interested in. And I think maybe even like starting out as a guest, you know, like just become a member of Facebook groups that you think you’ve, you want to develop an expertise in and you start out in those groups just as a member, you know, asking questions and answering questions. And then as people start to see you as somebody to turn to, like I know one lady in the goat world who she was super, she was so active in this goat group that a lot of people thought it was her group. And then she had a disagreement one day with the actual group owner and she left and, and she grew a new group, like faster than I even thought it was possible to grow a group like tens of thousands, over 10,000 people really fast because wow. So many people were like, Oh, she left. And so I’m gonna go. Yeah. She started a new group and they would give him the link and the link to it and that’s all she wants to do. Like she’s just happy with her Facebook group. She doesn’t have any aspirations even to write a book or anything.

Melissa Guller: She just wants to share a passion and her knowledge. Yeah. Yeah. Which is also, I think, a really wonderful goal.

Deborah Niemann: Right? Exactly. Yeah. You can do it any way you want. I just am my situation. It’s like I have to have a way to earn income. And if I can do it with this, talking about goats, I would much rather do it this way rather than going out and getting a job in marketing, which would be the alternative. And like marketing some product. I’m really not that passionate about

Melissa Guller: [Inaudible]. I think that that advice you just gave about the Facebook groups is really important because that’s such a great way to get in the world where people are already talking about a topic that you like and you don’t have to have any tech knowledge whatsoever. You can join a Facebook group, you can find a community elsewhere. Like I know for some people maybe read it, there are different forums in there and then just start becoming an active member and then you’ll build credibility. You’ll also see if you like talking about this topic a lot. I just think it’s such a good small step that anybody could do today. Like on a lunch break you could find a group or find a place to poke around and just leave some comments.

Deborah Niemann: Exactly. Yeah. And that was the thing like I was, I learned how to homestead on Yahoo groups pretty much in the early two thousands because that was where everybody was. I was on like 15 groups, which sounded astronomical, you know, in 2002 like Whoa, you’re on 15 Yahoo groups. Cause I was like on three or four go groups, a Turkey group and chicken group, a couple of general homes that are in groups, a cheese making, soap making. Like I was in a group for everything and I could sit there all day long. Like on Yahoo group. I spent way too much time on those groups.

Melissa Guller: That’s such a good sign though that it was something you really enjoyed talking about. Talking with other people about sharing knowledge on. It’s such a good little green light that you are onto [inaudible].

Deborah Niemann: Exactly. Yeah. I honestly, I told you earlier I started at like about a dozen different blogs. I can’t even tell you what those subject of most of those blogs today.

Melissa Guller: Hm. That’s pretty telling. On the other hand, I’m sure trying out so many different topics. Once you then found your, the the farmers diary, the three few homes that are the ones that really clicked probably felt different to you. Exactly. So it’s a good way to test it out.

Deborah Niemann: I would think about it like stuff would be hot. Like I would be doing something else and I’d be like, Oh, I have to write about this on my blog.

Melissa Guller: Hmm. That’s very telling too. Like just that impulse like Oh, I want to share about this. Yeah. So for anybody listening, I’m sure a lot of people could be in very early stages. Maybe wondering, should I blog about X? Should I talk about why? Maybe for now just join a couple of different groups on all kinds of different topics and then see which one you’re naturally drawn to or try blogging about a few different topics and see which ones you just kind of instinctually keep coming back to or keep thinking of new ideas for. That’s great advice. So before we do go, by the way, I’d love to know what else are you up to now? Or what’s next for you?

Deborah Niemann: Well, I’ve decided to start a membership program and last year I kind of played with this a little bit. So like last year I had four courses available, goats one-on-one, a course on birthing soap making and Oh parasites. I had a separate pair of set course. So anyway, I had done sales were kind of flattening out and then my list wasn’t growing very fast at that time. So I thought, well let me see what would happen if I just basically gave people the option of a subscription. You know, like you can have access to all four of these courses for $19 a month. And so I did that. And the thing I loved about it, I mean, so 25 people signed up, so that was cool. I was excited about that. A year later, 10 of them are still signed up, which I am amazed at because I didn’t say I’m going to give you new stuff every month or anything.

Deborah Niemann: I just said, this is your chance to rent the course, you know? And I kind of figured, you know, maybe six months and everybody would be done with them and, and be canceling. But actually I don’t think anybody canceled until after three months, which was good to know. The thing I hated about it is that since I was renting courses that people could buy, there was confusion on prices. Like I got some emails from some people who were very upset because they thought I was going to take away their lifetime access that they had purchased already. And I was like, Oh my gosh, no, I would never do that. Of course you still have lifetime access. That would be terrible. And so I was saying, Oh my gosh, I’m never doing that again. Like that was just horrible. Like what if there are other people who just thought that and didn’t email me, you know, and now they, they just think that they don’t have access anymore because not everybody complains to you and, but then I started, so I decided I want to start a membership course though and to keep these things separate.

Deborah Niemann: So I’m just going to have two big courses goes one Oh one and birthing are going to be the two main courses and then everything else is going to go into this membership program. And it’s also going to include a monthly zoom call or a monthly webinar so that people have access to me every month and those will be recorded and added to the membership. And then I’ll be adding stuff to them. I will be adding stuff to them monthly. So, because if you would’ve asked me a year ago I would’ve told you that I was going to start a cheesemaking course, but instead of starting a cheese making course, I’ve decided that’s just something I don’t want to have. I’ve seen people with 20 courses and I think that is awesome if that’s what you want to do, I just don’t want my life to be that complicated.

Melissa Guller: We realize though that there are so many approaches, tons of courses versus some people just have one course that they’re always, you know, continuously adding to or you’re considering a membership. So many different flavors depending on what you enjoy personally. So it’s cool to hear how it’s evolving for you.

Deborah Niemann: Yeah, and like the fun thing about the membership course is that I can add one off lectures in there. Like about what if you wanna sell your goat milk soap? Or what if you want to start a dairy or you know, what should you think about in terms of starting a business on your homestead? Like I don’t really like the whole course on that, but I actually do. I, I’ve got about 20 different talks that I do at conferences and a lot of those could be, could be broken. A lot of that can be broken up into little things that people with goats would be interested in and so it could just go into, it can go into the memory

Melissa Guller: Worship program. I think that’s a really interesting approach and memberships are something that we’re noticing a lot of online course creators are thinking about now because I mean two big things. One, like you’re saying, maybe there are topics that aren’t a full course, but it’d be interesting for the theme of one month and if you have people who are hoping to be lifelong learners and a lot of people who buy online courses are the ability to give them new content every so often is really exciting for you and for the students. And then another big draw to memberships is that you’re getting recurring income from a membership. If there’s something like a monthly or even an annual subscription fee, that’s something that for our creator can be really reassuring to know that you have people who are coming back and that everyone’s winning, you’re earning more money to support your life and then your students are benefiting from more access to you through zoom calls or more regular fun monthly themed topics. Right.

Deborah Niemann: Yeah. So I’m really looking forward to that. So I’m going to launch the membership program this fall.

Melissa Guller: That’s very exciting. Well actually right on track before we go, how can people keep in touch with you, learn more about their own goats and their own soap questions and then if they are curious too, how can they maybe get on that list to hear about your membership?

Deborah Niemann: I am online all over the place at Thrifty Homesteader, so my website is Thrifty Homesteader.com and you can find me on Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest at Thrifty Homesteader.

Melissa Guller: Perfect. And I’ll make sure we have links to everything in our show notes as well. Okay, awesome. Thank you. Yeah. Well, one more question before we go. Do you have any final words of wisdom or maybe any inspiration for anybody listening today?

Deborah Niemann: If you really want to create a course, I definitely think you should do it, but you also, you definitely have to do your homework and the, I think the really big thing is to listen to your followers and figure out what it is that they want to hear from you. Because I tell you, I was like just dying to pivot into the health space for like the last three or four years. I’m like, I want to start talking about human health. And then all of a sudden this summer it finally clicked. It’s like, why do I want to leave this wonderful niche where I have authority, where I can really help people, where there is nobody else that has my knowledge and experience and move into a field that is just overflowing with people and information and websites and where no one sees me as an authority.

Deborah Niemann: So really think about how you can make the biggest impact on the world. And it was really funny because I recently had this huge wake up call when I was thinking like, well, I love goats and I am helping make goat’s lives better by educating their owners. And then I got an email a few weeks ago from a man in Myenmar who said he was having problems with his goats and he couldn’t afford to take my course. And that he has an orphanage with 35 children and that raising the goats is how he supports the orphanage. And he’s like, well, you helped me. And I was like, Oh my goodness. Yeah, I will help you heart. It’s like here all along I thought I’m just helping goats and then, but I know I have a lot of followers to like 75, 80% of my followers were in the U S so I know I have followers in other countries. And it, it never occurred to me that like, I’m not just effecting goats lives. You know, like in many cases I am affecting human lives too. [inaudible] So you never know. Like, like you just may not realize what kind of an impact your knowledge can have on people and how much it can help them.

Melissa Guller: Yeah, I love that and like you said, you have a lot of knowledge about goats. I don’t know if anybody could have guessed that that could be something that’s having a major, major impact on maybe a child’s life in another country, but your course is right. It doesn’t matter how niche the topic. I think any knowledge that somebody has to share will be exactly what somebody else needs to hear. Right. Well on that note, I hope that people do check out your website just for the goat photos alone. Adorable, totally worth it, and it’s been such a pleasure having used so thank you again number for joining us on the podcast.

Deborah Niemann: All right. Thank you so much for having me. It was a lot of fun chatting.

Melissa Guller: Thanks so much for joining us this week. You can learn more about Deborah, the Thrifty Homesteader and Teachable in the show notes at www.teachable.com/eit7. Before you go, make sure you subscribe to the podcast so you can receive new episodes right when they’re released and if you’re enjoying the show, we hope you’ll leave us a five star review. On behalf of Team Teachable, we hope you enjoyed this episode about homesteading and raising goats with Deborah Niemann. We’ll see you in the next episode of Everything is Teachable.

Ep. 7: Raising goats (with Deborah Niemann of Thrifty Homesteader)

Today’s guest: Deborah Niemann, Thrifty Homesteader

“I think the really big thing is to listen to your followers and figure out what it is that they want to hear from you.”

What is Thrifty Homesteader (sustainable agriculture online courses)?

Where to find Deborah

Read the full transcript below.