From Scarcity to Abundance | It's a Mindset

It's supposed to be sleeting today, 6:30. I think that may be coming later, but right now it's thunder and lightning. Becky, what about this thunder and lightning storm? It's crazy! I have no idea what's going on out there because— Hey! It still says we're under a winter storm warning, and I'm like, um— I don't see it. At least, at least it's not the winter storm warning with, with Snowball being imminent. What if this was all ice? Yeah, that would be it. What if what was happening in Texas was happening here? My heart goes out to all you guys in Texas. I can't imagine. I would for sure be having this baby. The crazy storms and power outages in Texas. It's crazy because you like— they just don't get weather like this, so it's like I'm glad we have our Cummins right about now, Becky. Oh, I know, me too. We're good for 4 or 5 days a week if we are careful. Wait, what just happened? I'm just— maybe this is— I heard you go, "Whoo!" Maybe this is the beginning of the end. Okay. Wait, why are you guys coming in? I'm just going out. I'm cold. All right. It's raining. Is it all right, Mom? Should I have them go? It's fine. I'm not comfortable. She's going to send you back out if you start becoming a problem. Okay, but— You want to come? Come on. No! Let's go do the little animals together. Let's go do the little animals together. I'm taking a bath. You're going to take a bath? Yeah. And then I'll get out and then I'll come with you. Then you'll come? Yeah. Okay. Come. What did you just spill? Why is there water right there? I forgot rule number 1. Don't ask why. It's, it's not going to help your— it's not going to help your sanity because there's no good reason why there's an open box of water on the shoe nook. I just got you ready. You sure you're gonna come in? Yeah, it's hard to balance it all sometimes, guys. Farm vlogging, capturing the moments. Sometimes the kids lose momentum and focus. If you're not on them all the time. I'm probably not gonna be able to go with you. Why? Um, because my boots are wet. No, let's dry them off. I need another key. You know why we do chores? You guys really resonated with my— we went from a scarcity mentality to an abundance mentality in my— our first show of Rooted. You told me it was gonna snow yesterday. You told me it was 100%. It wasn't me, this is all about— We believed them, didn't we? Yeah, but the thing is that it's better than ice, you know. Either the weathermen know it's— know it's— know it's a lie, or they're lying either way because they either know it's a lie or they know they're just guessing and they don't tell us they're just guessing. But does this look like 100% snow? No, it doesn't even fit. It's not even that cold out here. Now maybe it will happen. I kind of hope not. I hope, I hope they're lying in this case for Snowball's sake. Did you guys turn the nest boxes in it? Well, I don't think it's happened. No, let's go to it. I asked Lily and it didn't happen. They said they're done, but we do the checklist and they're not quite done. So first let's talk about what is a scarcity mindset. If you're in a scarcity mindset, you think, you say things like I'll never have. I could never. Uh, I don't have any money. I can't do that. Let's see what's going on in here. Oh wow, this could be a problem. There's so much water in there from the rain coming off the greenhouse. Let's go get a load of wood chips and at least put it right here on her manure. She can hang out here, keep pooping here. We'll replenish her nest. We'll give her some over there. There's not much we can do about this little pond. We're gonna have to do a— look, water comes off this, this greenhouse. Look, it's all collected right there and it just comes in. We need to get a French drain going here. I thought about gutter. I don't know if I want to pierce into my plastic like that. A scarcity mindset is there's not enough. It's, it's, it's, it's fear-based. It's a camp-based— it's limited. It's, it's this limited, uh, limiting mindset. You can close this. Oh, I don't know if it's that. It's just coming off. It's running off the top of the roof. It's collecting all the water off the roof and dropping right here. See, it's pooling up there and, and it's going under and seeping up. Look over into all this water. See that? Sure, some is blowing in. Maybe that's what that is, but not much. I hate to put it— put the greenhouse down, plastic down, because it will get too hot in there. Especially bad right here. It must— the water must be running this way. I still fall into a scarcity mindset. In fact, when I watch Rooted and we talk about our financial story and laying awake, uh, at night nervous Uh, getting up early in the morning just anxious how we're going to pay the— it brings it back. It brings back some of those feelings. And I think our natural human tendency is to focus on the negative, to focus on what might go wrong, and instead of what goes wrong. So, and then I, I have goals. I mean, they might not be goals, they might be wishes, because I'm just still in the scarcity mindset. Okay, we have, we have neighboring properties, mucho acreage over there. That's over there, hundreds of acres. Again, on the other side of us, hundreds of acres. Could it err on the side of wish? Because, well, is it even for sale? One. But then one day, if it is, how can we afford that kind of money? It's ludicrous. I see water running in down, well, from there right into here. That needs to be ditched. Away. This is one of those things I wish I'd dealt with before because now we're gonna have to get a machine in here on top of our gardens. We tried to get chores done so we could go see the pond and the Everflow Creek. I know, I know, guys, we just want to do chores, but there's always something else. There's always something that has to be fixed, maintained. I wish chores could just be chores. But there's always something. We'll get you up there in just a little bit, guys. Just recently, Joel Salatin wanted me to sell 1,000 of his Polyface books. I thought that was impossible. I thought it was impossible. I said, I'm gonna let my mentor down. He thought I could sell 1,000 books. I think I could maybe sell 100. Oh, I'm gonna let him down major. But we ended up selling like 5,000 books, and we still sell like 5, 10 books a day. So hundreds of books a month. Polyfacedesigns.com. You guys are finding them and you're getting them through us. Thank you. I'm not— it's one of those things where I'm not even sure, like, how is that still evergreen? I mean, we launched it hard, but like, how are you guys— it's not like it's— it's not even on our website. You guys are finding it from our videos, I guess. Hopefully I'll remember to talk to you about how we actually went from a goal of 1,000 to multiple thousands. How that actually happened. But first, let's talk— we've talked about scarcity. What's abundance? What's the abundance mentality? Well, it's the opposite. It's the idea that there is enough, that nature has created enough to go around and supply for everyone. And that you are enough, that your mind is smart enough, that if you dwell on something and desire something hard and long enough, your, your mind, if you are willing to put in the hard work, put in the risk, and take a chance, it's there. It's there for the taking, and it's there for anybody who wants it. That's right, that's right. Rooster, you, you a man that. Let's get all that over here and then let's do one more on the other side. I just want to, you know, there's a lot of water in there. Let's give her a lot of dry area too. Looks like she's, uh, Beefcake's all right. The key question is then, how do I go from a scarcity mentality to an abundance mentality? Well, you start small. So at first, for me, guys, we had no money. But needed to start a homestead, wanted to start a homestead. We had no money, guys. We ran one chicken fence for a year. I mean, not a year, 10 years. For 10 years, I think we were caught up in the scarcity mentality. But one thing that we did that was an abundance mentality is we didn't have the money to get grass-fed beef, we didn't have the money to pay for the grain for our egg layers, We didn't have money for the meat chickens, whatever it was. Well, it's not that much harder if you need a dozen chickens for yourself to grow two dozen. It's not that much harder if you need one steer. Well, you better get two because they're herd animals. It's actually going to make things easier. We did learn that the hard way. Speaking of neighbor's property, I mean, we had a cow— our first cow escaped that way, and we found her like a week later 5 miles away. Yeah, don't get just one cow. They'll go and heat every 3 weeks, and if they don't have some sort of companion, they'll bust out. Instead of saying, oh, but we don't have money to grow grass-fed beef, we don't have money to grow chickens, we found a way. So we would pre-sell, you know, take down a deposit, call people in our phones literally and say, you want to go in on some grass-fed beef? And get deposits, and we'd have enough to get us started and actually make a little money on top of feeding ourselves basically for just the time we put into it. But that's the beginning. That was the first step. That was the baby step. That was a first step in abundance. We were saying no more to "I can't do this," but to "How?" You know, and eventually that led to our first Kickstarter, which was $35,000 in 30 days. And then to continually selling that, and then to launching on YouTube, and then to launching our member area. And, and then Joel's saying, I'm counting on you to sell 1,000 books. Hey, let's go! Where are y'all going? No, no, not yet. We're gonna go milk and then we will— what, what do you think's happening at the pond? I bet they think it's frozen. They're gonna be awfully disappointed. Should I let them go up? Let's take a little break and, uh, let's see what's going on at the pond before I start talking about the tools of how we switched. Let me give you one more example. Having children at home. Having more children. Guys, we were having— we had Gideon in the midst of our financial crisis. We just knew we would find a way. That was like at the pit of it all. But we insisted that we would find a way. Oh my. Wow. Wow. Need my high tops for this. Yes, the pond is overflowing. Essentially, we afforded these children. We found a way. Heck, when insurance doesn't cover it and you feel it's the right thing for you to do to have home birth, you have a home birth and you find a way to afford it. If I was standing far away, it would kind of look like you were walking on water. Yeah, it looks like you're— it looks like you're standing on the pond. Okay, walk this way. Yeah. Yeah, it looks like— it looks like you're walking on the water. This butchering shed, park the tractor shed, it's a lot. I mean, we just built the pole barn, here we are with this. It's abundance mentality, Justin. Abundance mentality. This is going to be with us for 100 years. When Grandpa built that old barn by hand, he didn't have any tools. None. But hand tools, no power tools. He built that barn. There was nothing stopping him. This is the least I can do for the Grandpa Henry legacy, because look at the tools that are available to us today. The entrepreneurial tools, the, the fabricated custom metal the team that came out and installed that. And here we are, 90 years later. This is a blessing. It's still here. And I'm sure Grandpa had his doubts. He thought maybe this was extravagant. Guys, original wood, original locust. My kids have a swing set on this now. That metal, that metal right there, 100 years old. That metal was used when they used it 90 years ago. The abundance mindset includes the long term, the sacrifice now, the delayed gratification now. So not just I can enjoy it in the future, probably not even so, I'm pushing it so hard, that those who come behind me can enjoy it. My dad still kicks himself for not finding a way to buy that neighbor's property. I think it was like It was hard for him to afford at the time. I think it was like something— I wish he was here, I could ask him, but I think it was like $50,000 or something, and that was a lot of money back then. But that property is worth like $3.5, $4 million now, way more than the $50,000 equivalent, uh, today. If my dad had any regrets, and he's gone now a year and a half, it was I heard it a number of times. I wish I would have— could have found a way. What did he say? I just couldn't afford it at the time, but I wish I would have found a way. I'll give you a real practical way to start thinking and getting into that abundance. Let's get the cows out, let's get milk, and I'll tell you why we milk. Oh, go around the gate, honey. Good girl. No, wrong way. Looks like we need a drain system here too. Goodness, that's filled up a foot of water. And that— we have a gutter on the— that, so that's just rain in here, in here, in this area. See, right now our water is coming off of this into the sacrifice area. We're gonna have to figure that out. And until we do, we're going to keep them off of it. I'm kind of curious if this is heated up yet. Josiah, do you want to go get our thermometer? It's in the— it should be in the gardening stall. Are you guys starting to put the hay down? Is that what's happening? We're trying to get rid of that so that we can walk through there better. I first learned about this concept in Think and Grow Rich. That's like a classic. I don't know if it's more You think by the title it's about business, and I guess a lot of it is, but it's also a lot about, you know, self-talk and not putting in the abundance mentality and getting yourself into a positive mindset. You know, one of the biggest things I got from that book was Daniel Pink's To Sell Is Human. Daniel had a challenge in there, and I'll never forget it. He's like, you know, We— there's a better self-talk than like constructive positive self-talk. Like, I can do it. I can do this kind of traditional self-talk. He said there's a better one. Let's see what we got. So Daniel proposed— yeah, that's not quite heating up. Daniel proposed let's have an interrogation. Interrogative, like interrogate. Let's have an interrogative. So how do you say it? Self-talk. 60 degrees. Yeah, it's not— are we— I want it to be 100. 100. So it's gonna have to get bigger. We're gonna have to keep putting more on there. I mean, we could try. It's 30 degrees out here, so 60, it means something. It's doing something. Just the warmer it gets, the quicker it's going to break down. More microbial life in there, and the more it's quickly— more quickly going to absorb all this manure. The interrogative goes like this. You don't say, let's talk about Joel Salatin's example, I can sell 1,000 copies of Polyface Designs. Instead, this is very powerful. If you take away anything from this video, learn to ask yourself this when you have a goal: when you want something. How can I blank? In that case, sell 1,000 copies of Polyface Designs. We're getting this hay that they're never gonna use. And what happened was I went from, oh, I can't sell 100 because, you know, I'll mention it in the vlog, some people will get it, it's an awesome book, it's great, to something completely different when I said, how can I Suddenly it was, well, I could go to Polyface and make bonus content and make vlogs about it. I could go to that farm. Oh, what if I gave like a surprise sticker? It's not that hard to make stickers. What if I got Joel Salatin himself to sign them? I got up the courage. I said, Joel, would you be willing to sign Polyface Designs. Yes, he would love to. So then I had Joel on the line. Hey, well, Joel, would you do a, a bonus webinar if people bought at the launch? Uh, could we give that to folks as a bonus? Sure, I'll do that. So then also, what if I, uh, come back home and really implement some of these things on my own farm. That's when I built the pig ramp. That's when I built the winter chicken housing system from that book. And honestly, if I— I mean, we're the worst for tracking analytics and stuff, but I think that's where these continual sales come from, is those videos were very popular that That pig ramp solved so many problems, being able to get pigs easily in a trailer. The winter housing solves so many problems, still does. And people just want to fix their own problems. Hey, should I keep going? Should I go on a little business rant right here? A little side note. Yes, let's get— let's get one more bell in there for her and another one ready, and we'll go on this little business rant. I'll go up there and try to get one down. Yeah, go ahead and get one of those too. So, you know, business is a good thing. You're solving people's problems. This time last year, we were going to our spring launch of member area. I guess it was a little late. It wasn't quite this time last year, but in spring. You know, I was hesitant because, you know, the world was uncertain and things like that. And I was talking to my assistant. She said, no, you've got to launch this because this is the answer. Thank you, Heather, for the reminder. And then, you know, folks got stimulus and we showed what you could do with $1,000. $1,000, and turns out— thank you, buddy— we can 3— you can 3x your money if you put it into food growing. You spend $1,000 on a raised bed system, which is an expensive gardening system, you still get almost $3,000 worth of goods out of it. So Polyface design was priced fairly for the value it is, and, and it's adding so much value to the world. So really, it was just— it was also a great product is why it sells well and continues to sell well. It's a timeless classic. So back to Daniel Pink, you ask, how can I? And you give yourself 5 reasons. You make your brain work. 5 reasons why you can. You know, when I started to say, how can I? And then I thought, of the various bonuses, extra content, getting him to sign webinars, all that. A lot of this is entrepreneurial. Well, guess what? I started small. I started with just selling extra eggs, selling extra beef. You might say, well, I'm not an entrepreneur, I don't want to be a businessman. It kind of has this negative connotation. I don't want to be a salesman. Why not? You're solving the world's problems. Like businesses are solving the world's problems. When you buy something, it's because it adds value to your life and makes it better in some way. Sure, there's corrupt people out there. Sure, we have consumerism. There's problems. There's people selling things that really should not be selling that are really not solutions. Things aren't making us happy. I can attest. Because I have this awesome pole barn, I'm not any happier. And we were happy when we were in dire straits, I'm glad to say. Now, this pole barn does make it easier, and I do sleep better at night. Am I happier? No, but life is easier. But then it'll make you happier on rest days. I can't— well, yeah, I guess you— I guess he's calling me out on that. In some ways, this does make me happier. I mean, it's hard to come out here and and not be happy in this wide open barn. It's cool, like the air is cool, it's raining, I'm not getting wet. I guess in some ways it is happier. So it's cool, like when you have a business that provides somebody's— really makes somebody's life better, and then you get something in return for that value. I've heard that saying, if you want to be a millionaire, help a million people. Same thing with a billionaire. Help a billion people. The guys who did the phones, the iPhones or whatever, they're in that billions range. And you know, having the phones, you can say there are certain bad things about them, but everybody's got them and you're doing good things on them. You are. They're one of the most powerful tools you can have. You guys are really getting my heart here. So, you know, I think I thought, I thought— I'm more bold in this message now. You know why? Because I used to think you had to be born an entrepreneur. I've been pursuing entrepreneur from selling St. Bernards when I was 14 years old to mowing grass when I was 16 to being a professional mountain boarder and now a professional homesteader. It's, uh, I thought it was just ingrained in me because I don't see everybody doing that. And I thought you had to be born an entrepreneur until a webinar probably a few months ago with our premium members in Abundant Permaculture. Somebody said in the webinar that they're concerned that our schools, or slash, I forget exactly what they said, our current society crushes the natural human spirit to be an entrepreneur. And I'm like, "Yes!" Like, you convinced me right there. Because naturally as humans, we want to share something good. Naturally, we want to help other people. And that's what business and entrepreneurship— we're naturally creative. And if you look at our society, well, we're kind of automatically plugged into a 9-to-5 situation. Since the very beginning. And if you look at my own school system, going to college for business, I had one— I had one practical business class on small business. We created our own small business. One practical class out of 4 years on how to actually run a business. Looking back now, it seemed like it just set us up for fitting into corporate America. And as humans, I don't know if we're made to function on a, on a, on a 9 to 5 and, and, and to work for somebody else's dream. I mean, you're gonna work for somebody else's dream or you're gonna work for your dream. And I think we all have dreams, and it doesn't have to be this big full-on thing. It can be the side hustle. It can be, I don't— I can't afford pigs. I cannot afford pigs, but I want pigs. Get some pigs. Call up some friends, get 2 pigs instead of 1. You eat the one, you sell the other one. That's the entrepreneur spirit. And really, why are we all homesteading? We're homesteading, yeah, to be healthy, to have control of our food. We're really homesteading to be free. And there's nothing like entrepreneurship that can set you free. When, when you become an entrepreneur, the sky's the limit. Time is money, and the more you can put into more business, the more folks you can help, and the more you can earn. It's not that way, um, in other situations. And so I'm not saying just jump off the cliff. I'm saying have a small dream, have a small goal, and say, how can I do it? And if it's to grow pigs, then that might be one idea that I sell— I grow 2 pigs and sell 1. And then what's happened is, how did we afford to farm at first? And then how did we do a $35,000 Kickstarter? It's because I asked myself, how is the answer to can I do this? Yes. And wrote out 5 different ways. Work that plan. Work that plan. And then How can I sell 1,000 Polyface design books? And now it's, how can I launch my own Netflix-quality docuseries? Like, that's nuts. To one day, how can I afford a multimillion-dollar property so that I can start a market farm, so I can start a community center, so we can have events, so we can grow this business, have land for our children? Children, let's loop her through the other side. And then looks like you guys got this. I'll go do Phyllis now, is that okay? Yeah, you guys got it. I hope you enjoyed that real talk from Uncle Justin, as they call me in the, uh, the Mibury area. And I want to invite you to that. I mean, you could get more of me. You can get more of me in an intimate way. Uh, I can get more of you. There's so many people that have helped us in the member area with our sheep, with the talk on entrepreneurship, all kinds of things. You know, right now we're doing New Year's registration. We found a bigger way to inspire folks. That's through our show Rooted. You know, right now you can watch— you can watch half of it for free on watchrooted.com and get a good sample. I think in the future we'll probably have that whole episode for free. But also in the future we're not showing other episodes, uh, but it is going into our member area as the inspirational piece. We also have the community piece where you can get in there and communicate with us, inspire others, get your questions answered, just be one— just join a bunch of us crazy chicken ladies and not feeling so crazy. I'd encourage you to check out our member area. We've We've got over 4,000 members now, 4,000 crazy chicken ladies. But I'm telling you, I always have room for one more. Unless of course you're premium and you want to text me and get on live webinars. That we have to limit. I can only adequately take care of so many texts a day, so many live webinar questions. So get in there while you can, February 21st. If you're seeing this afterwards, get in there. You can watch Rooted forever-ish in there, all future episodes of that. Our learning library, it's, it's there for you. And, uh, I mean, I guess once you get inside you could, you could technically upgrade. I mean, I guess that's a kind of a loophole we haven't addressed, but yeah, that, that can happen. I mean, I mean, that's, that's a little bit of a hack there. Check it out, link in the description. We're pushing it hard right now because it's New Year's registration. We're going back to regular vlogs next week. Thank you for sticking with us. Hopefully Snowball be here soon. Hopefully we don't have this big rainstorm. I'm gonna finish milking this cow. Round 1 of milking done. We gotta get Polly over here. She's— she likes to do a little sprint when she gets out. I mean, I don't blame her. They are in deep bedding right now. Oh, I did think of one more thing while we do this. Here you go, honey. Uh, somebody asked me when I did that video, what does Justin and Rose do all day? Well, they saw— you saw that I work pretty much. I work all day. I mean, I work all day from the time I get up to the time I go to bed. Somebody said, do you ever have any fun, or do you actually like to work? And I thought about the fun part first. I said, well, uh-oh, she not want to nurse. Here, it shouldn't matter. Come on, honey. She's on to us. All right, it's time to sell her anyway. Now what are we gonna do? She wants to have coffee. And I mean, like, it's time to wean her, sell her. She might be done. Looks like it. She's brushing. There we go, there we go. Uh, for fun, I enjoy reading. Once a week we, uh, we take it easy one day and watch a movie. I'm like, okay, yeah. Oh, we try to have fun while we're doing chores, like go see the pond, uh, fool around with the kids. After— the kids have plenty of fun. I used to ask my dad Did you enjoy work? He acted like he enjoyed work when he was a kid, and maybe he did because he never admitted he didn't. I didn't understand it as a kid, but now that I'm an adult and I work hard from dawn till— hard as a chicken, uh, that's saying a lot. I've lived with chickens for 24 hours. They work non-stop. I hear you smiling in the background. I hear you smiling. Okay, all right, let's get— let's get Polly off. Uh, I'll get to the point here and I'll wrap this little motivational talk up. What do you mean she did it on her? Yeah, so we put her on, it brings down more milk, then we take her off and we get that milk. Phyllis was hanging, holding back on us, and I think the calf may be on to us and it may not be worth it for her anymore. Here's the thing. I mean, take away this from all this. Yes, I enjoy working. It's because it's my dream. It's not somebody else's dream. And, uh, so I enjoy it. I enjoy what I do. Like, every day is Saturday. Rebecca and I make that joke all the time. Every day Saturday. In fact, Saturday, which actually ends up being our rest day, is harder because We're not doing as much, but getting the chores done. Like, I won't say it's one of my favorite days. Like, I like Monday. Well, we start working on Sunday, so I like— but you know the dreaded Monday feeling a lot of folks have? I like it. I like it. I'm excited to get back to work. So I encourage you guys, even if it's a side hustle, to find something you're passionate about to work on. And work isn't work anymore. Work is a passion. What happened to that ice storm? Nothing. Looks like got a lot of people to watch the news, go stockpile at the grocery store. Well, that's good news for if we have snowball this weekend, it'll be clear roads. I tell Rebecca, hey, could you have snowball on Friday? Because, uh, I'm No, I'm joking, of course. Could you have snowball on Friday? Because I don't have to vlog on Friday. I could film you. We have snowball Friday, then I can start casually editing that video Friday, Saturday, even Sunday, and that'll be Monday's post. And have snowball in the day when the lighting's all good and we can go to bed that night and have a good night's sleep. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. You can't control that. I know this, and, uh, that is way more important than any of this. But this is a big part of my heart. We're gonna, we're gonna capture it, document it, and, and have it forever and share it with you guys. It's a big part of our joy, guys. So, uh, it's ha— it makes us happy. Uh, it completes our joys, this joy to share it. So, uh, thanks so much for for being the viewers. You know, thank you, thank you guys. We couldn't have done all this without you guys, our loyal customers, our fans. Keep watching the video. Many of you don't even live on a homestead and you watch, and that just makes me so happy. Let's end it this time for real with a big Papa Bear hug.