This is the full transcript for Episode #349 of the Wild Business Growth podcast featuring Jamie Sonneville – 5th-Generation Farmer, Agri-Trak. You can listen to the interview and learn more here. Please note: this transcript is not 100% accurate.
Jamie Sonneville 0:00
Do you know that roses are a cousin to the
Max Branstetter 0:20
apple? Hello. Welcome back to Wild Business Growth. This your place to hear from a new wild entrepreneur turning Wild ideas into Wild growth. I have no idea where that accent came from. I’m Max Branstetter, who sometimes has a mysterious accent, and you can email me at today is Episode 349 and today’s guest is Jamie Sonneville, the Founder & CEO of Agri-Trak. She has come up with and leads super, super cool farm labor tracking software. She is a fifth generation farmer, and she knows a lot and a lot and a lot about apples and Apple farming, so all your apple questions, not not at the Genius Bar will be answered. It is Jamie. Enjoyyyyyy the showwwwww!
Max Branstetter 1:19
Aaaaaaalrightyyyyyyy we are here with Jamie Sonneville, Founder & CEO of Agri-Trak, and already one of my all time favorite guests, because our now, at the time of this recording, eight and a half month old daughter is named Jamie and Jamie Sonneville, I’m happy to share that we named her after you. So thank you so much for
Jamie Sonneville 1:39
joining today. I love that I’m great, like, grateful to have that much of an impact in the world already. Yeah,
Max Branstetter 1:45
yeah, of course. I mean, you, you, you’ve had a huge impact on her life already. It’s, it’s unbelievable. And she just spoke the right way. I was just, yeah, you took the Jamie words out of my mouth Exactly. There’s a whole debate about the spelling of it. You know, we get, she our fault. She’s gonna get that question throughout her life, probably, how you have but, yeah, we but yeah, we were all on the same page about spelling it this way, so it’s the correct way. Yeah, it’s the other way. And that’s the end of this interview. So thanks, Jamie. No, but before we get to agritrack and all the cool things you’re doing there in the we’ll call it greater Racha Cha area, but farmland, Farmville area. Speaking of farms, I heard that you are a fifth generation Apple farmer, which I would just go out on a limb, pun intended, and say that that’s a lot more generations of Apple farming than the average person. Can you paint a picture of like, what that childhood, what that upbringing, was like in that
Jamie Sonneville 2:39
environment? Yeah, for sure. So I would just clarify, fifth generation farmer. My dad was an apple farmer, but my
Max Branstetter 2:48
sorry that you know what we’re gonna we’re gonna get sued by and all the Steve Jobs Stans are gonna come after us. Man, yeah,
Jamie Sonneville 2:55
well, I just don’t, you know. I don’t want to anybody like, you know, you correctly portray who I am here. But a fifth generation farmer. And so what that really means? And also, just for the record, my husband is also a fifth generation so there’s lots of like, farm talk that has surrounded our lives. And what’s really interesting, I think, is people think about farming as a profession, but for people who aren’t living it day to day. It’s really a lifestyle. And so I grew up in that lifestyle where you had to pick and choose what you went to, literally based on, like, the season, or what was going to be ripe, or the weather, or even, like, is it still daylight out? Because we’re still going to work, we’re going to get something done until, you know we can’t, and then we can go to whatever that function is. And so that fifth Gen piece, to me, is so important, because that means, like, I know what my family went through and what their families went through, and, you know, all the way back to get to where we are today. And so it’s also been really fun, because I’ve been able to watch the progression of how agriculture has changed from my vantage point, looking at previous generations today and then trying to guess where it might go tomorrow.
Max Branstetter 4:09
Yeah, what an incredible history you have there. I guess. What’s another misconception that people have about, like farming and farming families?
Jamie Sonneville 4:17
Oh, man. I mean, I don’t think we have enough time today them all. I don’t know if I would say a misconception, but I will say what i’ve what I’ve noticed in my lifetime is farmers feed the world, right? Like we can’t survive without farmers who are growing the crops that we consume every day. But when I was a kid, there was this sort of, maybe just a really kind of quiet undertone that farmers were just farmers, right? Like a lot of them, maybe weren’t highly educated, maybe they were that, you know, no huge generalizations there, but there was a sort of perception that farmers were blue collar, just sort of like they exist. It. We needed them, and that’s what it was. And what I’ve seen in the last couple of decades is a real shift from that, sort of like farmers are just farmers, or they farm because they couldn’t do something else, which is absolutely not true to this, like noble profession that people really seem to be enamored with. They like to know where their food came from. They like to know who’s growing their food. They like to know that there’s sustainable practices being used. They also really have this sort of like, farmers are salt of the earth people, which I wholeheartedly agree with, and I think that a lot of the general public resonates with that sort of idea that farmers, like we can’t live without them. It’s a noble profession. They’re good people, and it’s been really kind of fun to see that that dynamic shift in the way people think about growers.
Max Branstetter 5:55
So let’s get to agritrack. I’m always amazed, like at this point, I’ve interviewed so many entrepreneurs on this show, and it’s like every episode, I’m just continually blown away by like, it doesn’t matter what industry you’re in, like, there’s so much like every industry is ripe for innovation. And really just like, time saving, efficient organization, helping organization, skills, helping solutions. And farming and agriculture is, like, a really, really, really fun one, because, to your point, like, it’s been around for so long, but like now with technology, there’s so much you can do. Yeah, first of all, for anybody who’s not too familiar with it, what’s like your one line, you know, the Uber of farming version for agritrack.
Jamie Sonneville 6:41
I mean, we really help farms digitize their operations and provide data and analytics to help them make smarter decisions. That’s my one liner.
Max Branstetter 6:50
Yeah, that’s perfect. Now we’re going to do two liner, three liner, no, just guy. Now, if you, if you check out your site and some of the images, pictures you have about the tools, it’s really awesome. And I could just imagine, on the like, consumer or receiving end of that farming end of that like, just how much lighter and easier it makes your life. So can you take us through like when you first realized there’s potential for this solution that you
Jamie Sonneville 7:16
created? So as I mentioned right, my husband and I are both fifth Gen farmers
Max Branstetter 7:20
only second gen Apple farmers, though, I have to thank you for the clarification. I’m here for you. We
Jamie Sonneville 7:26
bought my parents farm about 15 years ago, and when we bought the farm, right, like, we knew my parents had been making money, we didn’t necessarily know exactly, like, how much money, but like, they raised a family and it was working. So we knew that we were buying something that was profitable, but we didn’t really know how much, and that’s because my mom and dad, they farmed, like many of our agritrak customers farm today. They use a lot of like pen and paper, manual recording, and they looked at their operation as a whole. And so when you look at your operation as a whole, you if you think about like a factory, right? And you have different products. If you’re not dialing into which of those SKUs are making money which ones are not, and you’re just looking at your entire operation, you’re leaving a lot of hidden data on the table, right, and a lot of money possibly on the table. And so we knew that we wanted a better way to track what was happening on the farm. And at the same time as our farm was starting to grow, there was a real labor shortage here in the Northeast with farm laborers. And so the United States government has a program called the h2 a program that allows farms to have access to seasonal laborers from other countries. That program is we could have a whole segment on the program itself. There’s pros and cons to it, but one of the the pieces of it right is you have to have labor to harvest your crops. So grateful for the program, but it requires the recording of a lot of data points to help stay in compliance and to provide reports back to the government about what these individuals did on your farm and making sure that you’re paying them appropriately, you’re adhering to the contracts. It’s a very it’s a very contractual program, and you really need to stay within the confines of that. And so we knew, as we were growing our operation and moving into the h2 a program, we needed a better way to track things. And there were two options. I could go back to the farm and manually track a lot of the stuff and make sure, you know, I’s were dotted, t’s were crossed, and we’re doing everything we need to do. Or I could build something that helped us do that. I’ve always been in the IT world as a director of technology for school districts. I own an IT consulting business, and I figured, well, I don’t really want to get divorced, so going back to work with my husband every day is probably not like the best idea. Love them dearly, but I don’t know if we can work side by side every day together. And so I decided, like, let’s just try this. Let me build something. And so it is very like rudimentary sort of version, and even pre MVP version. We were using it to just track employees in and out of the orchard, and we knew when they got to work, when they went to lawn. Lunch when they came back from lunch, when they left, and very simple tracking around what they were doing. And we realized that that could drive payroll, because they get paid both hourly and by the piece rate. So now we could track better data to better pay them is honestly and the most accurately as possible. And we also realized, well, by virtue of them using our tools to make sure they get paid fairly, we’re gathering the most accurate data we’ve ever had around the exact like minutes people are doing tasks. So now we’re not looking at an employee just working eight hours a day, because typically, that’s what happens, right? You say, Well, they work seven to five. That’s because it’s easier to enter into Excel if you’re using Excel or QuickBooks or whatnot. What we found is our employees really were getting to work at like, 703 or 704 and they might leave a couple minutes early. Some days, they might leave 10 minutes late, but that rounding was leaving a lot of money on the table when they weren’t working, and it was leaving a lot of money on the table for them when they were working, and so we were much more accurately recording what was happening. And we were also, because we were recording to the minute, we knew exactly how long it was taking to complete specific jobs on the farm, using all of that data, right? We realized that we could no longer look at the operation as a whole. We had to break it down into segments. And so we looked at different locations, different blocks within those locations, and then different varieties within those blocks. And so we could compare, you know, America’s like, favorite apple, honey crisp apple. We could compare honey crisp from one location to another to understand like, which ones were yielding, like, better fruit, more fruit, was more work going into doing that. And those kind of analytics are sort of what came out of us trying to build a system to just more accurately record data. And then we had neighbors in the surrounding area say, hey, like, we would love to try that. Can we buy it? And I said, you know, I’m kind of a hustler of sorts. Of course, you can buy it. And then I went right back to my computer, like, how do I sell software? Subscription? I was not, you know, I didn’t set out to build a tool to sell. I didn’t set out to start a startup company. I was just building a tool to help us. And it was after about five different farms subscribed to agritech. I didn’t really know how it was selling a subscription that I realized there’s something here. It’s time to, like, maybe get some mentorship, start to learn, start to read as many books as possible, and figure out what what I was doing.
Max Branstetter 12:35
I think that that’s an amazing way to start a like a business that can last is to your point, just like building a tool that is out there to solve a problem that you’re experiencing yourself, there’s like, ways to start a business when you’re like, Oh, I just want to be an entrepreneur, entrepreneur, if you can pronounce it right, or, you know, I want to be my own boss, things like that. But then there’s the other side of like, I want to fix this and, like, whether that’s for me or for other people, I think that’s an amazing foundation to build upon. My heart, like, warmed when you said honey crisp, because I can, like, taste the honey crisp when you said that. And I’m somebody who I think for a long time, like, my favorite has always been Pink Lady. I’m a big pink lady fan, and more recently, tried honey crisp, and it’s like, has such a nice like, snap to it.
Jamie Sonneville 13:23
Well, I have a treat for you. There is a brand new Apple that is a cross between a honey crisp and a pink lady. Ooh. So, yeah, all right. It’s called a wild twist. I know this is not an apple segment, but you wish
Max Branstetter 13:39
for there might be an apple segment coming.
Jamie Sonneville 13:41
I can do that. I’d be happy to do that. We’ve got some really cool, really cool tech stuff happening on our farm as well. But wild twist, you got to go find it there. You know, Costco, I think Kroger trying to think of where else they are right now, but you can find them. Costco is probably the biggest retailer right now of wild twist, and it’s a fantastic
Max Branstetter 14:00
and it’s got wild in the name, so it’s perfect for this podcast.
Jamie Sonneville 14:03
So absolutely, you should brand them and
Max Branstetter 14:07
wild Business Growth apples, yeah, twist.
Jamie Sonneville 14:10
I did that last year. I put agritrack stickers on the apples when they were green, and then they ripened, and then pulled the stickers off, and then my agartrak logo was green. Like, oh, that’s
Max Branstetter 14:19
brilliant. I love it. I love that. I love like the little like marketing, branding tactics, like that. So you said something else, though. You said pre MVP, which is so many entrepreneurs talk about MVP, I always think of how, how clever it was from the creators of the show Silicon Valley that the first episode, the pilot episode, was called MVP. So it’s very pretty clever, but I’ve never heard the term pre MVP before, which is, like, a really, really important stage. So like, how what was going through your mind in terms of, like, making this, like, not even knowing what it looks like yet, but like, knowing that it needs, you know, this sort of product benefit, to actually be helpful for people.
Jamie Sonneville 14:53
I think I thought about, right, like, I’m solving a problem on our farm. And to me, the MVP stage came. Once we had other farms on the platform, and we were trying to build to meet their needs as well. It was no longer just like a single function tool, and that meant we had to think about farms that grew different products, that were set up differently, and that’s where the MV that’s when we got to MVP stage, in my mind, is like, okay, we’re building this for more than one person, and it has to function in a wide variety of ways. And so I know that pre MVP is probably something unique that, like I maybe just made up,
Max Branstetter 15:28
but, and now we’re talking about, it’s amazing how that happens. It
Jamie Sonneville 15:32
is, well, I mean, I guess I like to coin that everybody like pre MVP.
Max Branstetter 15:37
It’s my pre MVP. TM, yeah, a little TM
Jamie Sonneville 15:41
on that be great. You know, I think that when I didn’t even know I was starting a startup, right? Like that, to me is that pre MVP stage, and that’s we talk about agritrack. When some of our sales team talks to farms about, you know, implementing agritrack, they talk about how agritrack was built from the inside out. And I think that to your point, a lot of entrepreneurs will go out and try and create a product to solve a problem they’re not even sure exists, like they’re trying to find that problem because they want to be an entrepreneur. They want to build something. I’ve always been an entrepreneur. Things tend to just happen, and I think a lot of it is because I don’t go out seeking a problem to solve. I have a problem that I have to solve, and that’s sort of, you know, where we’re at.
Max Branstetter 16:25
Well, there you go. You have a future collaboration with the Inside Out movie franchise too. For your business, I love it. So on the tech side, and clearly with your IT consulting business, like you’re very knowledgeable about the tech side of things as well. What was a breakthrough you had on the tech side that really moved your software forward?
Jamie Sonneville 16:48
Um, it’s something we call a harvest unit. A lot of farms operate on the piece rate. They pay based on the piece. In the apple industry, you pay based on the bin of apples harvested. But I know that there’s different size bins. There’s 18 bushel bins, 19 and a half bushel bins, 2022, 12. And if you really want to pay as fairly and as accurately as possible, you really should be paying based on the bin size. Well, when then, when you think about the cherry industry, they often pay by the pound or by the lug. You think about the strawberry industry, they pay by the court or the flat. There’s all these different variables that could become incredibly difficult, especially if you’re using the h2 a program, and the government is dictating year over year price increases. And if you think about if you’re a farm that grows multiple commodities, having hundreds of container types going in and changing the price of those container types at the beginning of every season could actually be a nightmare. There’s really no great way to manage that. But what we found was, if we break things down into what we call the harvest unit, you can then build an unlimited number of container types based on X number of harvest units, and you only have to change the price of the harvest unit. And all of your your container types can reflect that change automatically. And so it’s sort of like the least common denominators, the way that we think of it, we break down to like, what’s the absolute smallest thing that we can track that you can then, you know, multiply a multiple of to get to that container size to pay by the piece. That has proven to be really we’re only selling to Apple farms when we started. But I thought, Well, my farm grows peaches and strawberries and other things as well. What if we sell to a flower farm or an herb farm? How would they track this? And that harvest unit is really that has set us up for success, because now we can sell to any vertical, and we can help track whatever it is they want to track.
Max Branstetter 18:52
What have you learned about selling software? Like, are you technically a SaaS company, if it comes down to it? Yeah. Okay, so Software as a Service, with the the two big S’s and the two small, as if we want to get really specific. But what have you learned about selling software through this journey?
Jamie Sonneville 19:07
Selling software to farmers is very different than selling a traditional SAS product to a business owner or operator. Selling SaaS Right? Like when you think, when you you first think of the concept, it can be a little bit confusing, because people are like software as a service. I don’t understand that, but most people today are familiar with just subscriptions, right? Almost everything is moved to a subscription based model. Why? Well, because your margins are highest, right? You are able to increase your revenue and grow year over year much more quickly in that model. But when you’re selling to farmers, and you’re selling a tool like mine that is literally changing the way that they operate, you’re also selling some change management that I didn’t anticipate having to sell. And so I think the SaaS business is really interesting. The model is great, but when you’re looking at selling. To the consumer, that the farmer, they have a much more slow approach, very antiquated in their practices. I mean, 80% of farms are still using pen and paper to track this kind of data. And so it’s, you know, we’re not competing with competitors necessarily. When we’re going to sales calls, we’re competing with pen and paper, and so it’s a very unique sale, very different than traditional SAS, I think,
Max Branstetter 20:27
yeah, that’s what it’s all the the veteran farmers who are keeping Dunder Mifflin Paper Company in business still,
Jamie Sonneville 20:34
hey, you know, one of my, like, least favorite sayings is, like, well, that’s how we’ve always done it, because that’s what we hear all the time is, well, that’s how, that’s how my dad did it, because most of these operations are multi generational, and I think it’s really easy to fall into the like, well, we need to trim now, because that’s how my dad did it, or we need to plant trees 16 feet apart, because that’s how my dad did it. And I always say, when I get to a farm, and we’re talking with these things, if they say, well, that’s how we always did it. If you’re not moving forward, you’re actually falling behind. And you know, there’s a crisis right now in the ag industry. In this country, farms are closing up at an alarming rate because the price of inputs have outpaced the price of product. And so the only way to account for that is to become more efficient and to grow at scale. If you don’t have the tools to give you the data to understand, like, what you should grow and why, well, that’s really difficult. And if you’re not progressing in your operation and giving yourself time back to do something different, to be more impactful elsewhere, you’re literally falling behind. So when I go into a farm that’s like, a multi generational farm that’s doing things in a very manual way, or at least, maybe they’re using some some tools, but it’s still very antiquated. That’s my favorite kind of a sale, because it’s like, I really think I can change the trajectory of your farm, but you’re going to have to, like, you’re going to have to trust me. And I think that that’s my insider knowledge of, like, growing up on a farm, owning a farm, operating a farm, I think I’m a little more credible, right, than, like, maybe one of my competitors in the space who isn’t from a
Max Branstetter 22:14
farm. I always go back to change is hard. Like, it’s just as humans like, we naturally, like, don’t want to change. I’m notoriously, notoriously stubborn. It’s probably my wife’s favorite quality about myself. But it takes so much of like effort, and I guess expanding your mind to do something new, especially when it’s something that you’re doing every day. Do you have like, a quick example of a customer or a farm that you’ve been working with who, to your point, was very much like, this is how we’ve always done it. And now they’re like, Wow, this is a game changer for us.
Jamie Sonneville 22:47
Yeah, you know, I don’t want to call any of my customers out, yeah, it can be, it can be anonymous, yeah. But we’ve definitely had, I can think of one in particular, that sort of father son duo. And I think there was a little bit of a fear that as the farm transition from, let’s say, gen one to gen two, that a lot of knowledge was going to walk out the door. And that was a little fear based purchase, I think of agritrack, like, Can you just help me collect data? But what they realized was, holy cow, like, we were really inefficient before, really inefficient, and we wanted to capture the information that gen one had, but all of a sudden, gen two is now like this is so much different. I’m no longer spending my entire Sunday afternoon doing payroll, right? I’m doing it in minutes on Monday morning before it’s due. And those are the kind of things that are really, really exciting to see. Same with my own farm. I’ll use that for an example as well. We were able to really analyze the different crops we were growing and what was profitable and what wasn’t. We found out that our apple crops were carrying our pears, meaning we were barely breaking even. Some years, we were losing like, $1,000 a year just growing pairs. That’s a lot of work to not make any money, and really sad to lose a little bit of money. We would never have known that, though, if we hadn’t started to track the data we’re tracking, and as soon as we ran reports, we had the data, we looked at the numbers, we realized we’re losing money. We ripped it out. And that was one of those. Like my dad had said, I’ve always made money in pairs, and so we just went with the pairs. Have always made our farm money, but they weren’t. And so it’s a great example of, you know, just because we’ve always done it that way doesn’t mean we have to continue to do it that way, and there are better ways to do it. And, you know, I know it’s my own farm, but that was pretty impactful for us, because it really changed the way we thought about our operation.
Max Branstetter 24:43
Well, my wife, Dana, has a pear allergy, so she’s a huge fan of that story. I’m sure.
Jamie Sonneville 24:49
Okay, well, they’re gone. We’ve ripped them all out. We don’t grow one pair.
Max Branstetter 24:52
I think, I think it was the other conspiracy theory. I think it was like, Dana behind the scenes was just like, you know, you got to look at this data and.
Jamie Sonneville 25:00
Yeah, interesting allergy.
Max Branstetter 25:05
So you asked for it. We have to do it. The Apple segment. This is a choose your own adventure podcast. You spoken into existence. I was curious about a lot of Apple questions, and like now, we have to do this. So this switch up. I’m just very curious about apples and Apple farming. So this is kind of a, you know, you said pre MVP earlier. This is a pre rapid fire, Q, a, all Apple. If you were, like, on your deathbed and can only have one apple, is like your last meal, which I’m sure the meal would be more than one apple, but maybe, maybe it wouldn’t be. What variety of Apple would it
Jamie Sonneville 25:38
be? Oh, man, I have to pick one.
Max Branstetter 25:41
Yeah, you’re on your deathbed.
Jamie Sonneville 25:42
It might be a wild twist.
Max Branstetter 25:44
I can’t wait to try these. Yeah, that’s awesome. We’re going straight to Costco there and get them. What is somebody who’s like a total outsider, like, what’s, what are some key things in terms of, like, the environment, the setting, I guess that makes it like a really good growing season for apples well.
Jamie Sonneville 26:03
So a couple of things, obviously, the the weather patterns, right? So we need a lot of heat in the summer, and as we move into the fall, we want those really cold nights that helps those apples color up, get nice and red, and that’s when it’s time to pick them. And so we’re really weather dependent, and we’re also location dependent. And what I mean by that is, if you look at the in New York State, for example, the Apple growing regions, they tend to follow, like the lake shore, Lake Ontario, South just I’m literally looking at the lake right now. I’m like, 1000 yards from the lake where I’m sitting in my office. But our farm is, you know, mile and a half south of Lake, and the lake is really instrumental in this area, in helping to insulate the area, meaning, when it’s really, really cold in the spring, if the lake is still a little bit warm, we’re able to ward off maybe a freeze event that would wipe out or decimate a crop in this area. And so the lake is really instrumental. And the soil that’s connected to the lake, we have a very sandy loamy soil here, which is really important for apples. Apples have been grown here for hundreds of years, and that’s why it’s just a great location to grow, grow fruit. The weather is great, but I will say I’ve noticed in the last decade or so, our weather has changed a tad. I think across the world, right? People are noticing our weather patterns are shifting, and so far, we’ve still been, you know, just okay for apples, but it’s been a little a little different, and I’m a little nervous as to like, where we might go. Does that push us out of like the prime weather patterns we’re growing through here?
Max Branstetter 27:45
That’s fascinating. You could have a full time job as a meteorologist as well. All right, what is your favorite food recipe or drink recipe to make using Apples,
Jamie Sonneville 28:00
like an apple cider, old fashioned, right? With a little, like, maple, yeah, brown sugar, cinnamon, like, old fashioned. Food wise, I think, like a straight up, like one of my mom’s apple pies. My mom makes awesome apple pies. I do not I don’t know why I can cook. I can cook really well. I cook all sorts of creative foods. I’m a foodie. I don’t bake very well. And I think maybe it’s because I have to, like, follow a very specific, like, recipe for baking. It’s not just like, you know, cook with your heart. It’s like, you need to put these proportions in, or things don’t work right. And, yeah, it’s the
Max Branstetter 28:35
entrepreneur gene. It’s like, yeah, it’s hard to stay, you know, follow a specific
Jamie Sonneville 28:40
plan. Yeah, I know color within the lines very well. Well,
Max Branstetter 28:44
actually, I was gonna ask about alcoholic drinks too. So we just had, we went a couple weekends ago here in New Jersey, there’s a cidery called burnt Mills cider, and it was, like, delicious. So, like me, personally, I’m a huge beer fan. Like, I haven’t had much cider, but some of this cider was, like, delicious. They had, like, a cranberry Chai flavor the hunt that was like, that’s the best cider I’ve ever had, hard cider I’ve ever had anyway. I don’t know if you guys are involved with this or not, but like, what makes the difference between making like cider from your apples versus making a hard cider?
Jamie Sonneville 29:15
So a hard cider is just a longer ferment, right? To get to like, the hard
Max Branstetter 29:21
it’s alcohol. It needs to harden, yeah,
Jamie Sonneville 29:24
yeah, right. And like, and then like, Appljack, people have heard of occasionally, like, you literally would take, like, a hard cider, and you can freeze it, and you take, you know, what’s left, which is the really concentrated, wait, Applejack, like, whiskey, yeah? Like, no, well, it’s called Applejack. It’s not Jack whiskey. It’s called Applejack.
Max Branstetter 29:42
Yeah, I’ve never heard that before. What it? What is it? Well, it’s
Jamie Sonneville 29:45
hard cider, but it’s hard like, so there’s different levels of hard cider, right? Like, the hard cider you’re going to get a cidery is going to be like, a six to 9% just like IPA might be, right? But if you continue to let that ferment, you’re. Quickly in like the 100 proof range, which is also hard cider, but now you’re looking at it as a spirit that you’re maybe mixing with a cocktail. And in our town, we have a couple of different cideries, and we have one distillery that originated from making spirits from apples, and so they’ve got all different kinds of vodkas and whiskeys, all made with Apple base, which is really interesting. Oh,
Max Branstetter 30:26
my God, that’s Wow. You just gave a lot of examples. That could be a lot of fun there.
Jamie Sonneville 30:31
Yeah, for sure, we, I mean, we live in a really cool place. I think because I was, you know, mentioning to a little bit earlier, before we started recording, that we live 30 minutes or so from Rochester. So within a half of an hour, we’re in downtown Rochester. Great food scene, great beverage scene, out here where we are, where most of the products are being grown to satisfy those sort of you know, requests in the city, all these little cideries and wineries are popping up in our town. It’s really cool because we know most of the owners, because they’re doing the same thing we’re doing, but they’re having to diversify. And that’s what’s really interesting about farms today. When I said, if you’re not progressing and changing and you’re falling behind, a lot of these multi Gen farms, in order to support more than one family as the younger generation comes in, they have to diversify. One of the ways I diversify is to find another way to another product, to create based on your raw product. And so, you know, apples, what’s next? Apple cider, or the agritourism, right? People are creating farm stands that have apple picking and pumpkin patches and hay rides, and you have to come up with really unique ways to use the resources that you have, and whether that’s your raw product or the property you’re sitting on, or you just scale, right? And so that’s what our farm has been doing. We’ve just been growing. We’ve tripled in size in the last 15 years. And I don’t think we’re slowing down because we have two children, no idea if they’re going to come back to the farm. Zero pressure, right? Like zero pressure, if they if they don’t want to, they shouldn’t, because, as I mentioned earlier, this is a lifestyle. But we’ve had to figure out how to get to the point that if our children want to be a part of this operation, we can also support that. And like I said, you’re there diversifying, or you’re scaling to get
Max Branstetter 32:17
there. Shout out, Rochacha. Gotta dive a little bit more into Rochacha in a second. But last one for this famous apple segment, which has been in the works for years. Here, what fruit is the most sensitive like? It’s a very small window where you have to get it right.
Jamie Sonneville 32:36
Probably berries. I think berries are really, really susceptible to pests, pathogens, diseases, the smallest amount of uncontrolled water can just think about like raspberries in your refrigerator. Or if you wash them and you put them away wet, they turn to mush. That happens on the bush. We used to grow strawberries and raspberries as a kid. I think that those might be some of the hardest things to grow. I’m not sure, but I do have an interesting Apple fact for you. Do you know that roses are a cousin to the apple?
Max Branstetter 33:13
Really? What a family tree?
Jamie Sonneville 33:17
Yeah, I don’t. I’ve never drawn. I don’t know what that looks like, but they’re related. And it’s interesting, because if you think about some apples, like a Red Delicious, right? Terrible Apple, I think it’s terrible. It’s very popular because it looks pretty. It has like a floral sort of nose and scent to it. And that’s really interesting to me, because when you think about the connection to roses, there is that floral scent in a lot of our apples.
Max Branstetter 33:41
Wow, that’s amazing. We got, we got actual trees. We got family trees, trees of farmers. Before we get in too much trouble. Let’s wrap up with some rapid fire. Q, A, this is not just about apples. This is about Microsoft. And I’m just gonna, couldn’t resist. But all right, let’s get wild. You mentioned Racha, Cha sorry. Shout out my friend, former co worker Shannon, who always described it that way. So sorry if nobody says that, we do. We do. Everybody talks about Wegmans. I have to ask about Wegmans. Why is it that Wegmans has like such a die hard, almost cult, like brand ambassador following
Jamie Sonneville 34:19
Wegmans was created here, right? Developed here. The Wegmans family is from here. Rochester is still a fairly small market, right? Like we’re a metro area, but fairly small. And it’s one of those types of neighborhoods where, or communities where, like, everybody knows everybody. So I think the fact that the Wegman family is from here, built a local grocery store, and people supported it because it was their neighbors. Goes back to a lot of like, who we are in this type of a community. We’re a very like, supportive, nurturing community. But then Wegmans took it to a whole new level, and they built the type of a grocery store that you want to go hang out at, which is really unusual. A lot of people will walk into a grocery store, get the grocery shopping done and take off. But Wegmans has built this environment of, like their friendly neighborhood, almost hang out. We’ve got cafes. Some of them have bars in them, like the eateries and the you can grab lunch, you can grab a breakfast sandwich. Like they’ve kind of created this place where you’re going to go there, and they know you’re going to buy something else while you’re there. And so I think that that’s why, you know, it started off with, let’s like, support our neighbors, and now it’s turned into like, let’s go see our neighbors at this place.
Max Branstetter 35:30
It’s a really great analysis of it. I’ve always thought that grocery stores have, like, kind of just a nice comforting vibe to it. In general, it’s like, mainly because I love food as well, and you’re surrounded by food, but there’s just something about, like, it’s well lit, if it’s the store is done right, and it’s kind of just, it’s not bad to, like, walk around through now, I’ve only been to Wegmans a couple times in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, randomly, and I totally see what you were just saying. It takes that comfort and that sense of almost home to the next level of just like, wow, like, I want to move in here.
Jamie Sonneville 36:05
Well, and they’ve done like, they’ve spent a ton of money on understanding consumer habits and consumer shopping habits. And you know, if you think about like, the displays that they build, the displays are beautiful. It’s a type of welcoming environment that you want to go to, you you know, and you are more apt to, I think, spend money in that kind of environment. Another thing they’ve done really well is they’ve created a private label, right, their weapons label, and they look at what’s really great sellers in the store, and they privatize that. They make it their own product that can compete price wise, with those big names. And I think that that’s been really, really successful for them
Max Branstetter 36:43
as well. Yeah, I’m a huge fan of the private labels here, here, just locally. It’s ShopRite because it’s down the street. They’re bowling basket brand. But same, same sort of thing, like, save a buck on everything. It builds up over time. All right, let’s talk time management. So you are seemingly incredibly busy. You have your agritrack, you have your IT consulting business, you have the farm. You have two kids, family like, there’s a lot, I know you’ve done a lot of stuff in school and school board over the years. What’s your time management tip that you can share of like, how you get it all done and find a few hours of sleep? I don’t know. We’ll put it on a quote card. I don’t, yeah,
Jamie Sonneville 37:24
I don’t know, first of all, like, first foremost, I have one of the most incredibly supportive families. I could not do what I do without my husband, who’s a huge cheerleader of mine, but also willing to pick up a ton of slack at home when I am working, traveling, meetings at night, etcetera. Could not do it without him. You know, my parents. My parents live right around the corner from us, and when our kids were younger, they would very, very often say, we’ll take the kids so you can go do what you have to do, or even if they didn’t take the kids. My mom’s always cooking and bringing food over. If I’m not, if I’m not home for a week. I’m traveling, and so without my family, I could not do it. The other thing that’s really interesting is I rely on technology to do a lot of things for me in searching. So, like, I’m very organized in, like, my home life, you know, like, like, my kitchen is very organized. If there’s not a place for something, then it doesn’t belong there. And that’s I built a new kitchen around that sort of mentality. But I don’t treat like my email. I don’t have folders who have my archive folder. Everything goes in there, but I rely on search to find it for me. And
Max Branstetter 38:32
I was like, huge search fan, yeah, I did like a computer update the other week, and for for just like, probably 20 minutes, the search function wasn’t working, and I’m like, What do I do? I can’t use email,
Jamie Sonneville 38:44
can’t function, right? I wouldn’t be the same way. And so I rely on some tech tools like that, AI. AI has drastically changed the speed at which I can pump things out and move on to the next. I’m very good at compartmentalizing so you know, when you’re on different committees and boards, and, you know, I own vacation rentals, we have a, you know, long term rentals, we have a lot going on in our lives. And if I didn’t compartmentalize like that, it would all be overlapping, and it’d be very difficult to kind of retrieve things. And so search is my friend. If I don’t have to commit it to memory, I don’t and I also don’t like paper. And people make fun of me. They say, Well, if you’re a techie, you don’t like paper. The reason I like paper is I’ve got multiple offices, got multiple vehicles, and if you can make a piece of paper in three days time, I couldn’t tell you where it land, right? It could be in a pocket. It could be in one of my 10 backpacks, depending on what my purpose like. If you give me paper, it’s going to disappear. But if I’m using AI tool to help record a conversation, I can retrieve it. If you send it to me in an email, I can retrieve it. So I also, I hate voicemail. Don’t leave me a voicemail because I’m not going to listen to it. I don’t like waste of time. So. Text me, yeah.
Max Branstetter 40:00
That’s something that’s been kind of fascinating, especially over the past, like, 1015, years of like, I think voicemail used to be really helpful, and it is. It’s helpful, but like, now it’s like, there. I feel like, especially like each new generation is, like, less and less using voicemail. It’s just Oh yeah. It feels antiquated. I’ll
Jamie Sonneville 40:19
have to say, Oh, your voicemail is full. Okay? It’s better that way.
Max Branstetter 40:24
Lock it, throw it away, bury it. Yeah.
Jamie Sonneville 40:26
And really, if you think about the act of, like, leaving somebody a voicemail, and then I have to go listen to it, and then I’m going to call them back or text them anyways, like, just shoot me a text or an email.
Max Branstetter 40:36
Well, that’s the best one that said that when you know who’s calling, and then there’s a message, and then they say, call me back. And like, that was the Met. That was the
Jamie Sonneville 40:44
adding time here, exactly. And so like, my cell phone provider will do the transcription of voicemails now, thank God for that, because then I don’t have to listen. I can just glance at another thing. Is Right? Like I know that you know, you’re probably like me were on zoom all the time. Like, I work remotely. My whole team is remote. I’m in teams, and zoom all the time. If you call me, I literally would have to stop what I’m doing to like but I can text while I’m on a zoom. I can still communicate while I’m on a zoom, but just like a PSA, stop calling people like this.
Max Branstetter 41:19
Yeah. Now we can reveal, you know, we’re recording this on squad cast, but I’ve been texting you this whole time telling you verbatim how to answer each question. So that’s been working great, too. So working Fantastic. Thanks. That’s what I just texted you. All right. Last one, this is probably the most important question I’ve ever asked. How often in your life have you used the phrase, how about dem apples?
Jamie Sonneville 41:41
My previous business partner’s license plate was dem apples. I have used that phrase a couple times in my
Max Branstetter 41:50
life. I was gonna say it’s probably that, that dad joke gets old quick.
Jamie Sonneville 41:54
No, I think it’s hilarious. My Yeah, I could go down a path with that kind of thing, but I will not refrain.
Max Branstetter 42:01
All right. Well, dem, Apple’s license plate. Jamie, this has been amazing. Thank you so much. Really appreciate you sharing the agritrack story and all of your lessons and even Apple tips, and I want to try wild twist right after this. So thank you so much. Where’s the best place for people to learn more about your business and then connect with you online? Yeah.
Jamie Sonneville 42:22
So agritrak.com we have a cool website that has a lot of information. We have sort of a Learn section that can tell you a little bit more about what we’re doing and who our customers are. And then LinkedIn is a great place to connect with me. If you want to know more about me personally and the types of things I’m up to,
Max Branstetter 42:37
perfect. And then last thing, final thoughts, it could be few words, words words to live by. Whatever you want. You could just say, How about dem apples, since you make it a third time, but now whatever you want, send us home here.
Jamie Sonneville 42:48
You know, one of the things we didn’t touch on is what I think is important to any new entrepreneur in when they want to start a business or looking to grow a business. And I think that is two things. One is mentorship, and the second is surrounding yourself with people who are smarter than you. Smarter than you. I guess this kind of goes hand in hand, but I don’t think that I would be where I’m at today if I didn’t participate in some accelerators and incubators and getting to know people who are incredibly intelligent that can help sort of lift you up through this process. So I would, I would suggest any entrepreneur goes out and find somebody who is definitely smarter than them to help them move through this process.
Max Branstetter 43:27
How about them apples? Thank you so much, Jamie, for all you do, for coming on Wild Business Growth, sharing your Wild story and thank you, Wild Listeners, for tuning into another episode. If you want to hear more Wild stories like this one, make sure to Follow Wild Business Growth on your favorite podcast app and subscribe on YouTube. YouTube is @MaxBranstetter. That’s where you will find the video versions. You can learn all things about MaxPodcasting, the Podcasting to the Max newsletter, and Wild Business Growth at MaxPodcasting.com and until next time, Let your business Run WildTwist…Bring on the Bongos!!
