March 14, 2024

Living the dream with the CEO of road side republic and peach stand operator Shannon Houchin

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Discover how a roadside peach stand can transform lives and communities on this inspiring episode of Living the Dream with Curveball. Join Shannon Houchin, founder of Roadside Republic, as she shares her journey from software sales to peach sales, and how she's helping students avoid college debt and families fund life's big ticket items. It's a story of sweet success and the power of small businesses to make a big impact.
www.roadsiderepublic.com

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> Speaker A>Welcome, um, to the Living the Dream podcast with curveball. Um, if you believe you can achieve, cheat, cheat.

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> Speaker B>Welcome to the living the Dream with curveball podcast, a show where I interview guests that teach, motivate and inspire. Today, I am joined by the founder of Roadside Republic, Shannon Houchin. Shannon has started a roadside peach stand, and she is using what she is doing to help students pay for college.

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> Speaker B>And she is serving her community. She's doing a great thing and she wants to talk to you today about her story, how it turned her life around. And if, uh, anybody out there is interested in doing something similar or doing what she's doing, she's the expert.

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> Speaker B>So, Shannon, thank you so much for joining us today.

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> Speaker C>Yeah, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

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> Speaker B>Why don't you start off by telling everybody a little bit about yourself?

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> Speaker C>Absolutely. So, I am located in Dallas Fort Worth, and my son and I have been running peach stands, roadside farm stands, produce stands since 2013.

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> Speaker C>Um, I got into the business more on a whim. Um, I was going through a life transition. My dad got really sick, he had brain cancer. And so I was looking to pivot from a software development, um, sales background into something that was boots on the ground. It was real, tangible, it was interacting with people face to face. And I'd had this friend for years who told me, um, about his experience growing up in South Carolina and selling peaches from roadside peach stands.

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> Speaker C>And he had told me, shannon, you just can't believe the amount of cash you can make at this business. You got to come check it out. So, um, that summer in 2013, when I was going through a life transition, I took my son, who was eleven, and we went to South Carolina for the summer. And we learned everything about peaches, um, from the orchard perspective of planting peach trees and then harvesting peaches and all the different varietals. We learned how to locate peach stands, we learned how to sell peaches, we learned how to, um, engage consumers and develop raving fans. And we learned how to create a business blueprint and scale from one roadside peach stand to 100. And so the cool thing about this business, which I learned very quickly, is that it is scalable.

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> Speaker C>You can scale up and down, you can run as many stands as you want or as few as you want. You can work seven days a week or you can just work a weekend. It really depends on what your own personal goals are. So, from that internship or apprenticeship, uh, the summer of 2013, um, uh, we came back to DFW and we started our own, um, peach farm stand business. Franchise here. I say franchise, but not really a franchise. But we started it here in Texas because we have a lot of peach orchards here as well. So my son and I have now been running peach stands, farm stands here in the DFW area for ten years, and we are still going strong. We're about 90 days out from the peach season. I think one of the closest peach orchards to us said opening day is May 11. So we're getting pretty excited. We're preparing for the season now.

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> Speaker B>Okay, well, what's the startup cost to run, uh, a peach stand? And for listeners who are out there wanting to start one, kind of tell them how to do it.

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> Speaker C>Yeah. So, um, it's a low barrier to entry.

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> Speaker C>It's low risk, but it's really high reward.

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> Speaker C>So what I teach college students, um, who want to operate and own a peach dam for the summer season. And the college students do this so that they can earn enough income to pay for an academic year's worth of tuition and including living expenses, too. So the college kids can start for as little as $200. That's all you need. You need like a table, you need a handwritten sign, an umbrella if you're doing it in Texas. And you need about $200 worth of peaches. And what the kids do and what they learn to do is you take that $200 investment, you sell through that inventory and then say you have$600 at the end of your first day. Well, you just roll that back into the inventory for the next day, and then it snowballs until the end of the week. You're in profit, $1,500, say, and you have all of your capital investment that you need to now buy all the materials and supplies and equipment you need for your stand. So a tent, banners, baskets, bags, everything that you would need to officially run your peach stand. And so that's how the kids get started.

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> Speaker C>$200. And we documented this process. About two years ago, my son took $200 and started a new peach stand on his own. I think he was a freshman in college then. He had been doing it quite a while, but we wanted to do a case study. So he took $200, started a stand, and by the end of the summer season, um, he was in profit. Probably it was about$40,000 is what he made off of that peach stand. So you can see how very quickly college kids can pay for tuition and living expenses with that kind of income. Families also use it to pay for, um, a new car, a big ticket purchase, like a house, a down payment on a home a Disney vacation. We have families who work with us, and they use the proceeds to pay for select sports. So there's a lot of parents who are in select soccer and softball and baseball and, uh, gymnastics. And that stuff's costly with all the travel. So the whole family works a stand in order to pay for the year's sporting activities while the kids are in school. So it's turned into not just a great cash based business that we started in 2013, but it's turned into a mission and a calling, um, for us to, um, support high school students and college students to stay out of college debt, and then to help families supplement all of these big ticket life items that come up in the course of raising a family.

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> Speaker C>Um, so that's how we teach kids to get started. And here locally, we do a lot of one on one coaching and teaching. So we work with about 20 to 25 college students, um, every summer season. And it's just a really fun, um, adventure.

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> Speaker B>So what kind of experience do you need to start up, and what will you feel will be the best areas in the country to start one of these?

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> Speaker C>Um, fortunately, you don't have to have a lot of experience. Um, the kids who I work with, they have zero, most of the time, zero job experience. They have very little sales experience, and they have none, virtually no experience running their own business. And so I teach them everything from the ground up. And my son and I, Finn, we created a course now which. Full of video modules where people who are not with us face to face can learn at their own pace. And we can talk about that a little bit later. But those resources and educational materials are available online.

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> Speaker C>Um, but really no experience. The things I look for with people who want to get into this business are just. Are they outgoing? Are they personable? Are they enthusiastic? Can they develop a connection and engage the people within their community, their consumers, to provide a really good experience, a shopping experience, and then just to be enthusiastic about storytelling and knowing all of the background behind the products that they sell. And whether that's peaches or watermelons or cantaloupes or tomatoes or corn, we find out everything we can about that product. What farm did it come from? Who are the farmers? When was it harvested? What's its flavor profile? What does it taste like? How do you store it? When was it picked? How do you cook it? What sort of, um, recipes can you make with it?

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> Speaker C>So, um, we teach the kids how to do everything, including salesmanship, how to run their financials, their profit and loss statements, how to take care of all their accounting. Um, we teach things like, what do you do with your waste? At the end of every day, you're going to have maybe peaches that are overripe. What do you do with your waste? We have a whole module on selling the waste. So nothing goes in the trash at our roadside stand. We recycle and upcycle everything.

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> Speaker C>Um, all of the cardboard and the boxes get recycled.

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> Speaker C>But the peaches, um, and any of the produce that's on the overripe side is sold to local businesses who make ice cream, peach preserves, jams and jellies. Um, people pickle stuff. Um, they make iced tea.

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> Speaker C>So all of our on the verge overripe produce goes to other producers.

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> Speaker C>So we teach everything from A to z. And you can do this really in any part of the US.

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> Speaker C>Um, the things that people have to look at in order to understand what, um, the qualifications may be, is to go to their local zoning department and understand if their city or township will require, um, a business license or maybe a seasonal permit.

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> Speaker C>Um, for most states in the south, it's pretty easy to sell produce from a roadside stand as long as it's uncut, unprocessed. You don't need, um, a permit to do so. You just have to have permission from the property owner to set up your stand. Um, but do check with, like I said, the zoning department. That's pretty much who's going to issue any business license or permitting. And the things that you can ask for, if you call your zoning department would be, um, a peddler's license, a seasonal permit, an itinerant license.

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> Speaker C>This all has to do with setting up just a seasonal or a temporary stand. You're not a food truck, you're not necessarily mobile because you're not traveling, but you're just seasonal and temporary.

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> Speaker C>So the folks at any, um, city or township zoning department can help you find that out. And there's produce everywhere in the country.

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> Speaker C>So you just have to inquire, do your research and find out who the local farms are, who the local orchards and growers are, because those are the folks you want to start your relationships with first, and you want to know where they are, what they grow, and what harvest dates are.

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> Speaker C>And then outside of that, we work with brokers and wholesalers. So there are products that we want to get from other parts of the country. So, for example, we bring in peaches from all over the US. We don't just do Texas peaches. We get South Carolina peaches, we get Georgia peaches. We actually get Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey, believe it or not, some pretty good peaches up in that part of the country. We get peaches from, um, Idaho, uh, Colorado, which are some of my favorite.

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> Speaker C>And of course, Texas. Um, and so we will rely on brokers and wholesalers to truck that stuff in for us. And then there are, um, terminal points over in Dallas where we go pick up all of the stuff that's trucked in.

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> Speaker C>So, um, you want to find out who your wholesalers and brokers are, and those are the folks to establish relationships with just to understand your timelines, your lead times, um, and what the terms are in dealing with those folks to purchase your inventory and then get it into your stands.

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> Speaker B>So tell us about your online course, tell us what it entails and, uh, how we can check it out.

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> Speaker C>Yeah, so you can find us@roadsiderepublic.com m. Um, there you can read all about us. And meet my son Finn, who, um, is actually at Boulder. He's in Cu Boulder during the academic year, and he'll be home pretty soon to start our season. And in our, um, I think it's a nine part, ah, series. We have nine modules in there, and it starts at the very front end. So if you don't have any business experience, we will take you through the process of all the criteria and requirements you will need to start your own business. And, I mean, it starts at the basics. Whether you want to be a sole proprietor, um, whether you want to be an LLC, an s corp, um, all of the permitting and licensing that you might need, tax status, sales tax, um, whether you're hiring family or staff or contractors. So we take you through, um, uh, that learning experience of starting your own business. And then we walk you through how to find a location, all the supplies that you need, um, how you find people to work for you, if you want to hire, um, contractors or staff, um, where to find your product. What kind of product should you sell at your roadside stand? If you don't want to sell perishables like produce and you want to sell hard goods, what should you consider?

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> Speaker C>Um, fortunately now, all over the country, there are these pop up shop, um, markets that exist almost every day of the week, especially during the spring and summer. And there are these opportunities where for as little as$25, you can set up your ten x tent and sell handmade goods. Soap, crocheted products, bread, um, cookies, organic dog treats, potted plants, succulents, um, paintings, jewelry. I mean, it's endless. The opportunities for small business owners to sell their products and so we talk about pop up shops in our, um, modules as well. If you want to sell hard goods, um, we, um, talk about how to find a location, what the criteria is for that, actually, how to sell, since we're dealing with a lot of students, um, educating them on how to be engaging, how to conduct a sale, how to close a sale, how to deal with all of your financials, um, um, how the appearance of what your roadside produce stand should look like, where to acquire all of your materials and supplies and equipment, um, how to put up your roadside stand, how to take down your roadside stand. I mean, everything you need to know is inside those modules. And we have a lot of free resources as well, guides like if you want to do, um, a pop up at a farmers market, how you get started there. So there's tons of, uh, free resources on our website.

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> Speaker B>Also tell us about any current upcoming projects that you're working on that listeners need to be aware of.

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> Speaker C>So, um, this is our 10th year in business and this is our fourth year, um, actually teaching people online how to open their own roadside stands. And this year we are starting a, um, trade organization. So we hope to have that all complete and available for membership, um, by the kickoff of Peach season, which will be about mid May. And this trade association will be for people who want to have their own pop up shop business or their own roadside stand. And the trade organization is going to be a place where people of, um, like minds who are interested in this line of business can come and get resources. They can get trainings. Um, they can learn about the marketing, they can learn about scaling their business. They can meet other folks, they can work with event organizers. We can meet the vendors who are out there. So that'll be, um, the suppliers of products and services. So that's the next big thing on our horizon is completing the trade organization.

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> Speaker B>All right, well, you already gave out your contact info, roadsiderepublic.com, so close us out with some final thoughts. Maybe if that was something I forgot to touch on or anything else you would like to talk to the listeners about.

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> Speaker C>Yeah, I would encourage anyone who is considering, anyone who has a desire to be their own boss, set their own schedule, be in charge of their own income, that a pop up shop is a great way to get started. A roadside stand or a pop up shop, because you can do it. It's so low risk. You don't have to know everything to get started. You just have to have a willingness, an interest, a passion, a desire, um, to sell, um, what you are passionate about and just a little bit of money, and you can, um, bootstrap your way to financial success in a really short amount of time.

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> Speaker C>So don't ever think that the barrier to entry is too high for you because it's really quite low. And you can get started on your schedule, um, um, ah, suiting your family's, um, interests and desires.

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> Speaker C>So if that's something of interest to you, take a risk, jump out there and get started tomorrow.

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> Speaker B>All right, ladies and gentlemen, roadsideRepublic, uh.com. Check it out. Follow rate review share this episode to the aspiring entrepreneurs out there.

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> Speaker B>If you have any guest or suggestion topics, see Jackson, 102 at Cox. Net is the place to send them.

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> Speaker B>As always, thank you for listening. And Shannon, thank you for joining us. And thank you for all that you're doing for your community.

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> Speaker C>Yeah, thank you so much for having me on. Have a great Saturday.

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> Speaker A>For more information on the living the Dream podcast, visit www.djcurveball.com.

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> Speaker A>Until next time, stay focused on living the dream. Dream.