The Maze Master's Social Media Goals

Hugh, The Maze Master

Hugh's Reviews

Each week Hugh reviews something, anything really, that has provoked a thoughtful insight.

Maize Quest Fun Park Twitter:
@mazefunpark
Hugh's Twitter:
@themazemaster
Hugh's personal Facebook: www.facebook.com/ themazemaster
Maize Quest Fun Park Facebook:
www.facebook.com/ maizequestfunpark
Hugh's Agritourism & Corn Maze Industry Blog:
www.agritourismspeaker.com
Get connected:
You may not rely on me for anything more than an email each week to boost your spirits (I hope!), but I've got some goals for the year involving social media connectedness for farmers.
1. Connect my farm every way possible to my customers: This is going to take time, but I'm going to do it. I've had great inspiration from speakers and new friends (shout out to Keith Padin), so, it's going to happen.
2. Create a community for Agritourism by being accessible to you, however you want to connect: Social media is easy, however you do it, so I'm going to make information such as the stuff you receive in this email available to you.
3. Reach out for help. All this sounds great, right? I need your help and we'll figure this out together. Use the links above to connect to me an my business(es) in which ever way you like or want to work on together.
4. Make it easy. You know, if we're all creating good content and we're all connected, we can repost, link, and retweet sometimes instead of having to do it alone!
5. Have fun. I love conference season because I get to hang out with my peeps; weird people like me. My goal is to keep it going throughout the year. You in? Choose and connect.

Have fun,

Hugh

www.cornmaze.com

www.mazecatalog.com

www.mazefunpark.com

www.maplelawnfarms.com

1-866-935-6738 ext 102

Connecting...

Connected!

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Curses upon you from your last convention.

I love conventions, but I routinely come home cursed. You do too, you just don't know it. You come home cursed by Knowledge, Group Think, and Greener Pastures. These curses render you ineffective, manipulate your emotions, change your spending habits, and leave you less competitive.

The Curse of Knowledge. (The Curse of Knowledge is derived from the book "Made to Stick" by Chip & Dan Heath.) The minute you know stuff, you can't un-know it and by knowing it you can't imagine that anyone else in the world doesn't know it. Follow that? You returned from your convention knowing stuff. It might have been in a session presented by a fellow operator, might have been an industry leader, might have been a keynote speaker or book author.

They told you that local food, for instance, is, as a trend, exploding. Everywhere the speaker looks local food is a rising tide that's going to raise all boats. Local food is the center core of everything you should believe in and work on this entire year.

You probably came home and expounded to your staff/family/friends that local food was a blah, blah, blah. It is key to notice that the speaker also writes local food cookbooks, takes local food based vacations, specifically hangs out in farmers markets, and personally has dedicated her food budget to local food. She can't possibly imagine a world without local food because her whole world is based in local food.

When you come home, you must deal with your world; the world in which you meet people everyday whose lives are not focused on local food. You have to sell to them.  We talk to each other at conventions and we're talking/preaching to the choir, so it's not surprising that we're all on board with local food, corn mazes, pick-your-own, etc. We do it everyday. We can't possibly imagine a world without those things.

A simple example: We, because we built it, know where everything is in the market, in our farm parks, and in our parking lot. As we jubilantly complained about "how dumb our customers are" and "how they can't park cars in our open grassed fields", we are blatantly demonstrating, embarrassingly demonstrating, "The Curse of Knowledge": If you drove to a strange place, saw buildings you've never seen, we're directed, loosely at best, into a wide-open grass field, would you be able to park?! Nope.

They say, "What you don't know can't hurt you." the converse is "What you do know can hurt you." If you and I insist on blindly knowing what we know, the Curse of Knowledge can separate us from our guests.

The Curse of Group Think. Sharing ideas. What a beautiful culture in our agritourism businesses. What flew, What flopped. Each of us takes turns presenting our successes for the year and inevitably we, as the audience for the presentation, take notes to implement those successes in our operations.

Sounds great, right? YES. Unequivocally, YES. It is one of the greatest tools for self-improvement in our industry. Also, NO. It is a terrible idea and it needs to stop. Ok, balance is the right goal with the Curse of Group Think. As we are listening to these stories, our mental filter must be running in overdrive.

Why filter these ideas? We, as an industry, must avoid homogenization. It's great for milk, bad for business. I talked to a number of operators who were noticing that, over time, many operations start to look the same; they homogenize. Name the top 5 fall harvest attractions: Pumpkins, Hayrides, Corn Mazes, Corn Box, Straw Bale Jump. Everybody's got'em!

We spend a lot of time and energy homogenizing our attractions which is exactly the WRONG thing to do. People visit our farms specifically because we're different and unique. I'm not advocating a complete abandonment of implementing best practices and best attractions, but you need your filter in overdrive with specific intent to know your local competition and add the parameter of "How unique is this attraction?" to your discussion of "What should we add this year?"

The Curse of Greener Pastures. You, quite frankly, want what your neighbor's got. At conventions this is magnified to "You want what the best farm three states away has got." Oh, how green the grass looks like over there! I'm so totally guilty of this I just came home to start planning my winery/corporate party center/brewery/concert stage/museum/hedge maze/wood-fired-oven/wedding venue.

You want what your neighbor's got! You just saw a great presentation on it! The pictures were amazing! It was the best thing they ever did for their farm! Wait -- Did you catch that? It was the best thing they ever did for their farm. Are you chasing someone else's dream or your own? Pastures have a way of looking greenest after someone takes a lot of time and goes through a lot of s&$t.

It is sooooooooo tempting to look at that beautiful green grass and come home to plan your winery/corporate party center/brewery/concert stage/museum/hedge maze/wood-fired-oven/wedding venue regardless of who you are, what your location and resources are, and what it really takes to run it as successfully as the person who presented at the conference does. This Curse is deadly because is can change your planning, spending, management needs, and throw your operation on it's head only to find out that their dream is not even what you wanted.

Group think, specifically continuously creating your farm in another farm's image, destroys the most powerful competitive advantage we have: We're authentically different. As you evaluate your options for this season, release yourself from the curse of knowledge, the curse of group think, the curse of greener pastures.

Best practices are fine. New ideas are stimulating, but the best thing you can do is be true to your authentic self; be true to your business's authentic spirit.

Go to conferences. Enjoy the people. Learn from the masters. Take notes. Just make sure you come home blessed, not cursed, by the experience.

Have a great week.
-Hugh

Inside the new farm market at richardsons

On the NAFDMA To work we got to visit a great farm market in maryland - the Richardson 's. Check out the inside of their market!

Technology test

Working hard to master social media. This is a test to post to my blog From my phone. Once I figure it out I promise better content!

Past Corn Mazes at Maize Quest Fun Park (New Park, PA)

via mazefunpark.com

I was taking a stroll down memory lane and thought I'd post the past mazes from 1997 to 2009, (2010 is not loaded yet). Thinking of how many families and children we've entertained is quite motivating for me in the cold of winter. Can't wait for spring to break and get cracking on the 2011 Adventure... (all copyright MQ, of course)

The end of the barn - The potato cellar comes crashing down.

Lots of history (and potatos) where stored in the barn,but the Maple Lawn Farms Potato Cellar came crashing down. The barn was sold to be reclaimed as a house in Texas, though you might doubt that's possible after seeing the footage.

In it's place will rise a new storage barn for equipment. The barn, though it had sentimental value, had aged past its purpose. No longer are potatoes grown on Maple Lawn Farms and the building was not sized to store modern equipment.

It was entertaining to watch come down!

 

Download now or watch on posterous

2011-02-18Barn.3gp (46446 KB)

Dad out the door.

When my dad was about 6 years old, he went out the door.

The "potato cellar" was a large barn with three floors and a basement- the cellar. Paul, my dad was on the top floor with his monther, my grandmother, called tohim, "Paul, get away from that door."

 

Paul replied, "Don't worry mom, it's locked! Seeeeeeeeeeeeee..." And with that, he promptly fell out of the barn. In the picture below, you can see the door still attached to the barn, right before we pulled it down.

 

Paul was fine, though he received a concussion and I would imagine a fairly torough talking to from his mother.

"Serving with irrational people."

I just joined the board and found irrational people. I just joined the board of the North American Farmers Direct Marketing Association and found a board of irrational people. (Some would call it elected to the board, not joined, and be technically correct. I call it sneaking in the back door.)

Irrational: 1 not logical or reasonable. This is a group of people I've looked up to for years. Most of them run very successful business, are well-respected work in the government/extension field, or are meeting and planning professionals. They just successfully organized a huge conference complete with bus tours,  dozens of guest speakers, keynote speakers, specialty workshops, and the industry's #1 trade show. After that, they stayed after for an extra day to work through what could be made better, analyze feedback, address complaints, and begin planning the next event.

Why irrational? Out of all the board members, no more than two stood to garner financial gain from all that work. Every board member has, I'm sure, plenty and maybe even better things to do. Each left behind workers, fellow staff, and family - unsupervised. This just doesn't make sense. It's completely irrational.

When sharing conference experiences, we learned of attendees who had changed their businesses, improved their farms, grown attendance, brought in family members, preserved their farms by creating profitability where there once was little hope. There was this palpable sense of meaning, of purpose in the room. These were some of my long-time idols moved by the success stories, great and small, of other attendees.

In all of the chances for celebrating a big "win" of a conference an inordinate amount of time was spent figuring out how we could make first-time attendees feel more welcome. I've got to tell you, NAFDMA is one of the most welcoming groups I've ever known (and I get around), but it wasn't good enough for them, STILL we spent time brainstorming ideas to encourage new visitors to plug-in and get the most from the conference. Isn't this overkill? Diminishing returns? "We're the nicest, but how could we be nicer?"

Yes. It's completely irrational. The organization is lead by irrational people. For them it just couldn't possibly pay off financially with all the time and effort and brainpower expended. really, they should all go home and get back to work. It's completely irrational, unless you are measuring with a different ruler. I learned first hand on Friday that this irrational board measures with a different ruler.

They each seem to have received so many ideas, created so many new friends, shared so much information, and benefited from association with good-willed, like-minded people that they are willing to be irrationally committed to the membership. They are irrationally committed to creating a welcoming environment, a sharing environment in which new and long-time members can grow.

I looked around the table at those irrational people and couldn't believe my luck to be included. I've been irrational for most of my life, but it's never been more important for me to irrationally believe in what's possible when good people are dedicated to serving their fellow farmers and communities.

Are you irrational enough? Is there something in your life that you believe in so completely that you are willing to work irrationally on its behalf? Money, success and fame, all of which you could chase your whole life, can never replace true meaning and purpose; true self-sacrificing service to others. Pursuing your highest potential, your most meaningful purpose in life will bring you joy that cannot be purchased.

Maybe the irrational are the most reasonable among us.

Have an irrationally productive week.
-Hugh

Reach us at: www.mazecatalog.com

NAFDMA Best Ideas 2011

Hugh, The Maze Master

Hugh's Reviews

Each week Hugh reviews something, anything really, that has provoked a thoughtful insight.

 

NAFDMA Best Ideas:

1. From Ben Beaver's presentation: Customer service training is CHEAP, compared to the cost of acquiring a new customer with advertising dollars. It is also seldom done with more than "on the job training."

Pull money from your advertising budget to train your staff more thoroughly and explain to them WHY you are training them to take good care of customers.

2. From Keith Padin and the "Crab Bus Nerd Session": Social media is easy-ish, cheap or free, and effective. Keith from Jones Family Farm held a contest for charity between Jones and another competing farm to get the most Facebook Fans. The winner donated to charity and the loser when to work at the other farm for a day. GREAT PR stunt!

3. From Brad Montgomery's keynote speech: "Find Happy" No one can make you feel anything. It's your job to find little things that make you happy each and every day. "Act Happy" Even if you're not happy, act happy and you'll feel better. We all want to feel better, right?

Have fun,

Hugh