03. THE GOAT BUSINESS WITH PETER WOODSIDE

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

people, goats, business, farm, hour, pete, portland, kids, adrian, baby goats, long, pay, chickens, babies, incredible, schedule, parties, year, instagram, animals

SPEAKERS

Pete, Rob, Intro, Adrian

Intro 

Welcome to the get rich, slow podcast. This is the stuff we and our expert guests Wish we knew a decade ago to get the most out of our financial life will provide you with insight into wealth building activities and practices that can expand your net worth exponentially. get insight from top professionals who will reveal how to build wealth the long way, work smarter, not harder and identify your financial blind spots. With over 25 plus years of experience as licensed real estate professionals and a long track record of winning for their clients. Robin Adrian will teach you what it takes to be an everyday real estate millionaire.

Adrian 

Future millionaires, thanks for joining us today. I’m here with my co host, Robert delevan. This is Adrian SHERMER. And today our guest is Peter Woodside. Peter, thanks so much for joining us.

Rob 

Good to see Pete.

Adrian 

Pete here does a very unique type of business that you might not think of if you were asking yourself the question, how do I make money and build my future wealth? Pete, why don’t you tell us a little bit about your business and what it is you you do the service you provide?

Pete 

Yeah, so our business is essentially it’s baby goats. Maybe we started out just breeding goats and selling babies. And the money was not very good in that. And so we looked for a way to pivot things and be able to make a living doing this. And now we take baby goats to birthday parties or other events. We’ve done weddings, bachelorette parties, baby showers, church events, we’ve done like street festivals. And then recently, within the last year due to COVID, we weren’t having any events scheduled. So we shifted things. And now we run a lot of our business out of our farm and have families bring their kids out and play with the baby goats and feed the chickens and just enjoy an hour of farm life.

Adrian 

And the crazy thing is, I mean, my kids have been there. And there’s they were what, six and 10 at the time with your daughter who was four at the time, three, four at the time. Yeah, they’re running around. And these little goats are like, you know, what?

Pete 

Three or four pounds like,

Adrian 

yeah, they’re tiny. And but they’re running around and the kids just carry goats around. It’s they’re the pygmy goats. Is

Pete 

that right? Right. Yeah, you’re one of those. They’re miniature dairy goats.

Adrian 

Yeah. And the cutest thing on the planet. I mean, you just like, they’re so cute. It’s just, it’s just stupid. And the kids go nuts. And they’re and people are paying to comment, basically just go therapy notes in therapy and taking pictures. Lots of selfies, right, Pete? Yeah. So how many how many goats do you have on the property?

Pete 

We have 56 right now. Okay. 52 of them are female, four of them are male. And then all those girls are going to have babies starting. We just barely had our first ones Born on Saturday. And we’re gonna have close to 100 babies this year, hopefully.

Adrian 

So. So what do you have? Have you said half a dozen in March? And then April? We don’t have any in March. Who knows? We weren’t expecting the ones that were born this week.

Pete 

We got five they’re due in April, for sure. And then everyone should be after that, man.

Adrian 

So what does with 100 goats? Does the business look any different than 50?

Pete 

Not really, it’s just more saturation and goats when you come and visit. Okay, now with just two, if we have a couple of groups out, then only two people get to hold goats, those tiny ones at a time. We keep some of our babies from the previous year. So we have like 15 from last year that are six months to eight months old. But they’re they’re just they’re getting too big to hold her carry around. And they’re still sweet. And they’re still small.

Adrian 

So So what’s the business model look like? So basically, you’re you’re bringing people in, it’s like 10 bucks an hour, yes, we

Pete 

charge $10 per person per hour, right. And with COVID, we’re limiting how many people can be added to time. So we have three groups of less than 10 at a time. If people want to have the place to themselves, they can schedule a private hour, which is a little bit more. Um, yeah, and then

Adrian 

totally separate love this so much. I love this. So so much that and you have that you have people who are like I want exclusive access to the goats for the full hour.

Pete 

So I when they schedule, I get an email that says that they schedule them with time. And occasionally I’ll get like a group of three that scheduled a private hour. And so then they’re going to pay like $150 for an hour for that just the three of them to be there. And so I always reach out to make sure like, Did you mean to do a private hour or making sure they get surprised that we are expecting them to pay more than $10 right.

Adrian 

So the so there’s there’s two pieces to this business, right? Because you know, our podcast is about you know, building wealth getting rich. Low, if you will, having a viable business having, you know, doing the right things being working smarter, not harder, all those things. But there’s two things with your business. There’s the actual farming entity, right, like managing the goats themselves and the, you know, the land and that piece. And then there’s the business side. So, obviously, the farming side is pretty straightforward. But like, what would you say is like your, your How do you split your time? And then what’s your approach to take both of them or explain that

Pete 

to us? So I try to do, I try to do the farming stuff at the same time as I’m having people visiting Oh, as much as I can just to try to basically kill two birds with one stone. Sure. But like, there’s a lot of things like taking care of babies that aren’t quite strong enough when they’re born. And so like, I’m taking them taking them in the house. And I’m feeding them several times a night and checking temperatures and stuff like that. Stuff like fence maintenance, we got to do that when there’s not people around, we’re planning to build a barn. We can’t do that when there’s people around. So a lot of that stuff is stuff that takes place in the wintertime, when things are slower. We’re here in Portland, so it’s really rainy, really muddy. People are still coming out. But we just have to try to work around that and get the farm stuff done. And we also do stuff early in the morning. And once we’re closed in the evening, trying to get everything cleaned up and in a way that it looks nice when people come visit.

Adrian 

And that’s your basically you and is it your dad or Yeah, yeah, so the two of you. So two people are working on this, in essence on the physical part. And then how is it full time? I mean, part time, like, what would you say?

Pete 

Um, I don’t know, it’s hard to say because it’s not like we clock in and clock out hours. So I don’t live on the farm. It’s my dad’s farm. I live about 20 minutes away from there. So he he has to do more than I do. Just like the the day to day stuff, like feeding everybody and closing everyone in at night, letting everybody out in the morning just to make sure that no one’s getting getting hurt by the predators or anything like that. But I would say it’s probably less than 40 hours a week for each of us. For sure. Yeah. As far as the visits, we’re open from 10 to five. And typically he does, like 10 to one. And then I do from one to five will sometimes have an hour overlap where we’re working on other things, too. But yeah, it’s definitely not a full time.

Adrian 

And how many, how many days a week? Are you guys open?

Pete 

We’re open every day.

Adrian 

Okay, seven days. And so then what? What is what are you doing on the I mean, obviously, this started nothing,

Adrian 

right?

Adrian 

What are you doing social media marketing? Like, how are you growing the business that way.

Pete 

Um, so at the start of COVID, is around April, we decided we were going to just open things up to have people come out and visit. And we already had a social media presence. It wasn’t very strong on Instagram and Facebook. So we started paying for some Instagram ads and Facebook ads just to like, get the word out that we have this opportunity for people to get out of town. And we specifically targeted people that are the age that would have young kids, and it worked really well. But once we got a certain number of people that came out the the return on the investment on the marketing side was just not worth it anymore. Because people were doing our marketing for us. Every family that came out posted on Instagram and Facebook and their 100 friends saw it and if just five of them came out, then they’d posted it, and then their five friends and it just it’s blown up since then. So we don’t we don’t pay for any kind of marketing right now.

Adrian 

So total just viral. Right? I mean, it’s it’s like in my industry, your industry. Adrian it’s like the dream, right?

Adrian 

Yeah, yeah. People don’t generally post you know, they post the new house picture, but it’s it’s not quite as engaging as baby goats. I don’t think so. It’s pretty sweet that you’ve you’ve, you know, work yourself into an industry that that self promotes like that. I mean, if that’s anything we can learn. One thing is, hey, social media is a lot easier when what you sell is fun to post. And it sounds like your customers are primarily it’s families of people bringing their kids in

Pete 

with a lot of that we also have we also have some customers just like older couples that want to come out or people who don’t have kids, just parent or adults that don’t have kids. They just love goats and want to come out and load off. Hmm,

Adrian 

what percentage would you say are repeat customers? I’m just so fascinated by this, like niche market.

Pete 

Um, we’re at the point right now, where if whenever people come we ask if you’ve been here before, and we’re to the point that when people say no, we were surprised.

Adrian 

Interesting.

Adrian 

Love it. And they they want to come out again and again. Yeah. What do you how do you how are you setting yourself up? Like, you know, we’re starting, you know, we’re in March now 2021, so roughly a year into COVID. The vaccinations are coming through, you know, I think the numbers like in the US is 80 million, I think doses, which means, you know, probably 50 million that are fully vaccinated and so on. But it’s only going to continue. So this was, Do you consider like, Are you concerned that the business was a COVID phenomenon? And how do you see it transitioning,

Pete 

I was actually talking to my dad about this, this week, just asking if it’s better for us, if COVID lingers longer and causes the shutdown longer, or if it’s better for us if things open up and get back to normal. And we just decided that it doesn’t, we’re not really affected by COVID. I think COVID was a catalyst for us. But now that we’re operating, and people know who we are, and people still want to get out of out of the city and do baby goats are still cute, people still like that. I think it’s actually gonna be better for us, if things start to open up, we have some plans on some ways that we can expand the business, we’re planning to reach out to some farmers markets in the area and do like a standard farmers market where people who are there can stop in for 10 minutes and sit and all the baby go and is five or 10 bucks, and then then they can continue on. And that wouldn’t pull away from our party business or from our business on the farm. That’s just another avenue that we can market this. That’s awesome. limited by COVID because people aren’t going to farmers markets and they’re not wanting to be sure. Other people.

Adrian 

It’s It’s really incredible. And in this day and age, I don’t see 20 years ago, before social media became really a thing that this would have worked, at least not in the same way.

Pete 

Not Not even close, you would

Adrian 

have to go to the zoo, right? Go to like a petting zoo and then fight the crowds and and deal with the whole,

Pete 

who did we just our business would just never would have been discovered right here in order for us to reach out to those those individuals that can benefit from what we offer the most.

Adrian 

So what was going back to that? What was your like? Or can you point to the moment where you can snap your finger and say, that’s when I realized I could charge $10 for somebody to come into my house and carry around a baby goat?

Pete 

I don’t know. I can’t really, I can’t really pinpoint one moment where I was like, Oh, this is it. This is what we can do. It was just like, we were thinking also with COVID. My family and I were living in a two bedroom apartment with two kids. My wife is working from home. And it’s just we’re crammed in there hurdle. Yep. And so we were going out to the farm every day and spending hours out there with the goats. And then I kind of had an aha moment where I was like, other people might want to do this, because we’re doing it every day. And so I said, let’s just, let’s just put it on social media and see what happens with pay for an ad like $10 a day or something like that. And just see what happens. And the visit started trickling in, people started scheduling, I initially was doing all of our scheduling, just manually, like texted me or email me and I’ll put you on the schedule. And it got to where I was doing that, like five or six hours a day just like responding to people and answering Dang. And I was like, I gotta find another. Crazy. And then I would like people would call or text and be like, Hey, can I get an appointment for this time. And then like, every once in a while, I would just like not put it in right away. And then we have people showing up. And we weren’t expecting them because I didn’t have it on the schedule. And so I went with a third party scheduling website. And they just they go right on our website and they schedule it goes right to my calendar right away. But it’s crazy. Now to think that I did that for so long, manually.

Adrian 

How many months? were you doing a manual thing

Pete 

two or three, maybe four months?

Adrian 

So that quickly it scaled up to That’s awesome. We talked about this a little rob the you know, fire yourself from as many jobs as you possibly can. And it’s cool to hear how you managed to scale scale up and how much technology has really leveraged this business. I imagine growing organically in the pre tech age would have been like you said it’s very difficult you got to travel by word of mouth but boy, maybe goats probably sell themselves you guys have any other animals on the on the property that you let people?

Pete 

We’ve got probably 150 chickens that Oh yeah, anything about that on the website, but that’s a lot of people come out and that’s their favorite thing is field and you can toss all the food out we give to people for free to come and feed them and the chickens just come running. They flock over and just a variety of the feather patterns on them. And we have so many different breeds that it’s just really interesting for people who either even People who have chickens love it, just to see what there is out there.

Adrian 

So literally, you’re paying. I’m sorry, your customers are paying to do the manual labor of feed the chickens.

Pete 

And if we have eggs go collect eggs. Yeah. That’s definitely they don’t get to do,

Adrian 

right. Which is hugely important, I think. I mean, I had a quasi rural upbringing, but most, like 95% of kids, they don’t get any exposure to this. I mean, even I mean, who who goes to the State Fair anymore? Right? Or the the local fair? I mean, not as many people as you think. So it’s just, I mean, my kids were in heaven when they were there. But I can’t even imagine. So who’s your? Who’s your most? I probably shouldn’t ask this. You may not well, you may want to be PC, in your response, who’s the most annoying guests like the type?

Pete 

So there really aren’t any guests that are super annoying. I’m happy to talk with everyone who’s there and answer any questions people have. But sometimes families will come out and their kids just want to know everyone’s names. So we have these six goats and they want to know every single one’s name. That’s awesome. Same one over and over and spend the whole hour just telling them. Yeah, that’s butter. butterscotch, that’s over and over. Yeah. So we should name them.

Rob 

Yeah. So who, who names them? Who gets to choose all the names?

Pete 

I would say I have the biggest say, but my girls like to name and we have a lot of Disney Princesses out there. Yeah. Try to do themes. So like siblings. We had Ringo and star last year. Nice. Get. Yeah. So just, we did a flower themes. We had Lily and lilac and Daisy and Rose. And just stuff like that is interesting. And I don’t know.

Rob 

And do you remember them? Or the or your girls remember better?

Pete 

I think I remember better. But they do. They do pretty well.

Rob 

They do pretty good.

Adrian 

Yeah, I think I’d lose it after like five I would just start to really have a hard time. But that’s another idea. I wouldn’t pay to name a goat. Can I get a Rob?

Adrian 

Yeah. Hey, there we go. How about a Robin and Adrian? Oh, man, it’s it’s incredible to me how people are able to make a living in this new you know, we call it the new economy, right? But it’s, I mean, this was a hobby, basically, right? Like a little side hustle hobby you were gonna sell, sell goats just to people who wanted to buy them. And basically, we were losing money selling baby goats. Because we loved it, it was worth it. And this, correct me if I’m wrong. This is in 2020. It was a six figure income? Like, I mean, Adrian, how would you even like, where what would you do when you’re doing the loan application? Is I

Adrian 

what would you got cash flow, you’re go, you’re golden. Yeah, that’s really the ultimate This is. I would call this agro tourism. And it’s a super fascinating piece of the the industry, I went out to a couple of, you know, when we hit COVID, again, staying and going places became like a, you know, we need to find a new way to do this. And I went out to at least one farm in the local area that had, you know, converted to a campsite. And we were right near a fence with, you know, goats and cows and everything. And I think it’s, it’s awesome. I mean, it’s the the evolution of these type of businesses. And like you’re saying, Rob, it’s the exposure for, you know, you don’t even have to be in our city anymore, you can be pretty much anywhere in rural America, there’s a good chance that you won’t even see a horse around or a chicken or anything, unless someone has been in their backyard. And it’s more of like, almost like a trendy thing, I guess would be a way to put it. So I think there’s a need. And I think you, Peter, you offer good service, because this is not. Yeah, you could go to the Portland Zoo and look at you know, whatever animals they have their but this is, this is also visiting a farm, which is an authentic experience that is good to pass on to generations as it becomes, I guess less cool. It’s kind of it’s kind of like less cool. And then cooler again, because it’s I don’t know, there’s something very real about it, you know?

Adrian 

Yeah, it’s, it’s honest work.

Pete 

It’s something that anyone of any age can enjoy, too. We’ve had people that are up over 90 years old, come out and have an amazing time and just talk about when they were a kid when they had animals and had their two years old come out and just love it. Like that’s

Adrian 

overwhelmed having a good time. That’s incredible. The goats like it seems like a bunch of interaction, I mean, mental stimulation, interacting, that the animals that I’ve read,

Pete 

yeah, we’ve had some people coming after On Instagram, saying that we’re we’re exploiting the animals. Oh, but my response to anyone who says anything like that is Come on out. See the lives they live see where they have like the space they have. They have a beautiful, beautiful view of the valley and Mount St. Helens and they’re well fed and they’re happy you can tell if they were stressed or it caused them any kind of distress we wouldn’t be doing it

Adrian 

Yeah, that’s incredible. Um, you’re always gonna have the internet troll world and you know what do they say like road rage on a on but coming from a different freeway, right? Like it’s just it’s a stupid

Adrian 

commute

Adrian 

so business name where do we find you again and and your your physical location?

Pete 

We are Portland go parties. Our website is Portland go parties calm. Find us on Facebook or Instagram. Portland go parties. And our our farm is out south of Hillsborough. up near Shoals, near Newburgh, new ball peak State Park. No 4045 minutes from downtown Portland,

Adrian 

and 45 minutes away and like memory for ever. Probably. Everybody’s going to get the most social media engagement they’ve ever had. By being there for an hour with their kids. Right? Yeah,

Pete 

I can’t even count how many times I’ve had people say this is the best day of my life. This isn’t.

Adrian 

That’s awesome. Better than a roller coaster better than Disneyland. Yeah, Portland go parties. For a drink with dinner.

Pete 

This is way better. You remember a lot longer.

Adrian 

I think I would rather go see some baby goats and yeah, see a movie or something like that. The sounds like just that much more engaging, fun experience. Yeah.

Adrian 

Incredible. Well, appreciate it. Pete thank you for sharing. Man, just just an incredible story. I mean, we’re probably gonna have to do some sort of follow up like annually. And and track is this Pete has a goat farm in every state.

Adrian 

Yeah. How long have you been up to speed?

Pete 

We’ve had the farm for five years, almost now. Not very long.

Adrian 

And how long would you say the you know, this became almost like a, that became the focus of the business, I guess, that it became go parties and not just

Pete 

so so my goal last year in January for our income for the year was $15,000. And I told my dad, and he kind of laughed at me and said, Well, how are you going to do that? ended up being a lot, a lot better than that. So it’s within the last year, I would say is when things are really taken off. That’s where the slope

Adrian 

really, that’s awesome. Well, we are looking forward to seeing continued development of this, Pete. But I think as it is right now alone, you know, obviously, you’re killing it. So thanks so much for coming and sharing a little bit of what you do and letting our audience here. You know, just a very different way of going about this. I mean, you didn’t go to college for goats. Did you

Pete 

owe me a degree to teach high school math.

Adrian 

And you’re not going to be teaching high school math as long as you’re running this business, right? Well,

Pete 

these kids a lot more.

Adrian 

better behaved.

Adrian 

That’s awesome. Thank you. Thank you again for coming on. Appreciate it. We’ll, we’ll we’ll look forward to the annual update. That’s great. All right.

Take care. Thanks, guys.

Intro 

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