Saved by the Barn's Kelly Holt

Kelly Holt is the Executive Director of The Barn Sanctuary, featured on Animal Planet’s "Saved by the Barn". From rescuing farm animals to rescuing entrepreneurs from the lies we tell ourselves, Kelly unpacks how compassion is what fuels success.

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Transcript

Big On Small - The Official Small Business Podcast
Ep. 002 - Saved by the Barn’s Kelly Holt

[MUSIC: Noah Smith “New Girl”]

Karolyn Hart You’re listening to “Big on Small”, the official small business podcast powered by InspireHUB, I’m Karolyn Hart.

Samantha Castro And I’m Samantha Castro.

Karolyn Hart We unpack the big ideas happening in small organizations for businesses, agencies,  schools, towns, charities, and teams. 

Samantha Castro Because what we know is that good things come FROM small packages and there’s nothing small about doing good.

Today’s episode is definitely close to home, or should we say the barn?  We’re chatting with Kelly Holt,  the Executive Director of Barn Sanctuary  and cast member of Animal Planet’s Saved By the Barn. Kelly’s journey to leading a rapidly growing farm animal rescue started in the most unlikely of places - magazine publishing that ultimately focused on the tech startup world and even led her to working with InspireHUB. Out of a world hyper-focused on perfection, Kelly shares how embracing ANTI-Perfectionism led her to finding her own freedom and success.

PART ONE - Perfecting Imperfection

[MUSIC: Shimmer “A Better World”]

Samantha Castro Some people will look at a business and think, “Look at how successful they are”. They’ve got it all figured out. It comes so easy for them.

Kelly will be the first to tell you; there’s no such thing as an overnight success.

Kelly Holt Everyone wants to talk about their successes and the really exciting stuff that's happening but I mean it's always an interesting journey, everyone is different getting to where they're at. Every successful person has failures and a backstory. 

Samantha Castro Kelly’s backstory starts in 2011 where she finished her Bachelors of Anthropology at Southwestern University but wasn’t ready to leave the Austin area. 

Kelly Holt I just knew where I wanted to be and that was in Austin and I just found a job, the first job I could find in Austin. And it was a retail job and I just started working on whatever creative project or idea I was exploring at the time in my free time.

Samantha Castro And it was through this free time that she got a glimpse at the vibrant, creative, startup scene that Austin’s known for. Always having a passion for writing, and celebrating human diversity, Kelly launched into her own startup in 2012. 

Kelly Holt I basically started a magazine about entrepreneurs in the city of Austin. I wanted it to be a print magazine but also online. I wanted to do that intentionally to preserve a little bit of the art with print. I basically recruited a bunch of volunteer writers, photographers. There's so many young aspiring artists and professionals in Austin and we really just teamed up and we worked on this great magazine that I ran for three years called the Austin Phoenix. And we wrote in depth pieces about different entrepreneurs in the city, what they were doing, what their mission was. And it was just an interesting look into the lives of the different entrepreneurs in Austin.

Samantha Castro But the magazine world can be brutal and Kelly described some of the challenges they were facing. 

Kelly Holt It's definitely a difficult industry to start a business in and we weren't making a lot of money off of ads. And so, it was just too hard and unsustainable to keep it going. 

Samantha Castro Another reason Kelly decided to stop the magazine was that over the course of their publications, she saw The Austin Phoenix start to morph into a different genre.

[MUSIC: Olexandr Ignatov “Technology”]

Kelly Holt It eventually became more of a tech entrepreneur focused magazine which I let it take that direction because that's where the need and the majority of the people were working in Austin was in the tech scene. It became more about investment, the business side of stuff, and I really had started it from more of a varied entrepreneur perspective so like artists, musicians and business entrepreneurs.

And so, eventually it became a little bit less of an artistic profession for me and I started getting more involved in the tech entrepreneur scene myself working with some of the businesses that we were featuring. And so, I ended up leaving the magazine. It was a great project for a while but I decided to stop working on it and started working for startups in Austin. And that's where I really feel like my career took the path that it's on that put me here.

Samantha Castro Having to end something that you worked so hard to build is always hard. You put all of this time and effort into creating the business, getting the people together to come alongside you, and then over time as things and people change, you end up shutting your doors - or stopping the publication in this case - and that can be devastating. 

I wanted to know from Kelly how she felt about this time and what she’s learned since then.

Kelly Holt There's so much personal identity that gets put into the work that you do. When you dedicate so much of your life and your time to your career you place a lot of personal value and a lot of personal identity on the work and the job and the company that you work for and I think it's really important. I've learned to keep really healthy boundaries between your personal identity and the work that you do because it makes you better and stronger and more capable of showing up for others when you do have those boundaries in place. It's easier to be objective about challenges that arise because they will arise so I think that's probably one of the biggest lessons for me.

Karolyn Hart You know, what is so interesting? I actually know the moment my career changed and it was my mentor, his name was Tim and I was 26 years old. He actually shared that with me. He said, "The moment you can understand that who you are is not what you do it's going to unleash you because then when you understand that if somebody is critiquing your work they're not critiquing you. I mean they can like you it just might be that your work isn't great." 

And he's like, if you could just understand that as you put it that boundary it changes absolutely everything because then you're seeking out, give me that feedback. It doesn't matter it's not about who I am is not this thing.

And also, when you do move on if you ever move on into different roles, different jobs you're not going to have an identity crisis because you understand who you are and it's not what you actually do. That profoundly changed me. I had never heard that. And I needed help, I had to have someone tell me that. So kudos to you Kelly that you figured that out all on your own so.

Kelly Holt It's definitely important and I think it becomes clearer and clearer the more responsibilities you have why that's important. Because you will get critiqued and critiques are not always bad. And the thing is no one's going to do a good job at their job all of the time. And so, when you do get feedback or critiques although it's our natural response to tense up and to feel uncomfortable it's really important that we can hear it for what it really is and not take it personally because critiques and feedback help us grow and become better. And I think handling it with kindness and respect for the other person who had the courage to speak up and say something because it's hard giving feedback too.

Karolyn Hart Yeah, it is. And so, I'll just put it out there for everybody who's listening because I think it's a funny story. So, I am very young. Tim has to try to coach and mentor Karolyn who as I've already alluded to was rather obnoxious. And I'll never forget because he said, "You're so smart. You're so talented. But it's interesting because when anybody critiques your work you get so defensive," to which I reply, "I'm not defensive." And I was like, "I'm being defensive right now." And it was this awful moment of self realization that literally in the moment of being coached about being defensive I was being defensive. 

And coming through that really did come down to the problem was that I saw my work as this extension of who I was. And I do think it's such an important message for anyone in business to understand that your business that you're running that you're leading your small business it's a thing that you're doing it's not necessarily who you actually are as a person. It's not the main value you bring to this world, this commerce exercise that you're doing.

Kelly Holt Yeah it's definitely hard to separate yourself especially when you're so dedicated to your work. It's really difficult to draw those boundaries but I think it's really important. That's one of the big lessons I've learned. 

Samantha Castro Another lesson Kelly learned?

Kelly Holt Yeah I'm a 100% anti-perfectionist. I don't think that people should be striving for perfection. I don't think that's realistic and it's definitely not human.

Karolyn Hart So, what brought you to that point where you had that aha was it always there? Did you always understand that? Because you were creating a magazine which is all about perfection so that seems curious to me.

Kelly Holt I've come so, so far since the magazine days. I got so stressed. The Austin Phoenix in my mind, it's really hard for me to call it a failure because it taught me so much and it meant so much to me. But it didn't really succeed as a business, we weren't making money enough to really build a business with it. And in a lot of ways it was really unhealthy for me because I became so stressed, I was so emotionally tied to the work I was doing. It was a relief when I let it go. So, I think that taught me a lot but really the anti-perfectionist thing it comes from my entire career and my life in general.

I think in every kind of interaction the stress that we put on ourselves to be the perfect whatever we're being at that moment it really doesn't make for valuable conversations, it doesn't make for good human connections, it doesn't make for good leadership. It creates a problem where there doesn't need to be one when we strive to be perfect instead of honest and good. And I think it's just the wrong value to put at the forefront if you're trying to do something powerful, if you're trying to make a positive impact. Almost everything that you need to do in business requires working with people and in order to really build positive connections with each other in order to understand how people are doing you can't be focused constantly on perfection in business or self perfection it'll just drive you nuts and will just come in the way.

I remember when we first started Barn Sanctuary we had all these lofty goals about being the sanctuary that people turn to for best animal care practices and the ones who lead the way for new and innovative marketing techniques. And we just thought we were going to be the best and we're four years old and we don't... None of the people who are paid employee leaders are experienced nonprofit entrepreneurs. We have experience in entrepreneurship but we don't have nonprofit management experience. So everyone is on a learning curve.

[MUSIC: Alsever Lake “Rise Up”]

Our biggest challenge at Barn Sanctuary is how rapidly we've grown. It's a blessing in so many ways and I say blessing meaning we worked our butts off to get here. And it's beautiful but at the same time it's a significant risk growing so rapidly because we have to make sure that we have everything covered. And it can be really stressful for people who are on learning curves to feel the weight of the responsibility that's growing every day. And trying to keep up with just doing the best that we can sometimes is enough and not striving to be perfect.

I think there's a lot of anxiety about performance and doing a good job and I think that just makes the statement that someone cares about the work that they do and that's perfectly fine. I feel like everyone should care about the work that they do and if you don't care about the work that you do you should probably do something that you care about.

Samantha Castro Coming up after the break, Kelly dives into the tech startup scene to find work she cares for and helps to plant the seeds that changed multiple peoples’ lives.

[AD MUSIC - Rhythm Scott “Old Skool 808”]

COMMERCIAL

This episode of Big on Small is brought to you by us! - InspireHUB, creators of the Award winning IHUBApp digital experience platform. We make it easy for those with large, diverse audiences to provide a digital experience that is personal, accessible and secure. We’ve helped our small business clients thrive in this new digital world and want to share our advice with you. The Small Business Survival Guide is a free Step-by-step guide on how to make your business survive today so you can thrive tomorrow. Download a copy of the guide by visiting inspirehub.com/survivalguide. That’s InspireH-U-B.com/survivalguide.

Part Two: Landing pad or Launching pad

Samantha Castro Kelly’s decision in 2015 to stop The Austin Phoenix and work for the companies that she featured instead, led her to multiple startups in the Austin area. One of those companies was InspireHUB. Here’s Karolyn: 

Karolyn Hart It was like the startup chain connection of someone who knows somebody that knows somebody and they're like, "Hey, there's this, I have a person for you that can really help you." 

Samantha Castro One of the people that referred Kelly to us was Dan McKernan. If you know about Barn Sanctuary, you know Dan as it’s Founder, but before that, he was InspireHUB's third employee. And his impact went much deeper than his technical contributions as a developer shaping our company.  He had a profound influence on us as people. Karolyn explains how:

Karolyn Hart I don't know if you know this story Kelly but one of the first conversations I ever had with Dan was when I was interviewing him he was in another Austin tech startup in that whole scene. And I remember he said to me because we were into this strange thing, we were going off to help the Mandela family so it was something even then he had this craving to do something bigger and we were talking about that. And so, he says to me, "I just know that I want to do something that's going to really change the world." And I was like, "Awesome. What's that thing?" And he said to me, "Dude, I have no idea."

And I laughed at that and I said, "That's okay. How about this? We'll go do this thing for as long as we've got you until you figure out what that's going to be." And I remember you educated him on the whole vegan plant life thing and you and I hadn't even met yet and he brought that into our circles and a bunch of converts happened within InspireHUB. He did it very differently. 

I think you both have that educational softness about you. It's not like some of the more militant things I've seen in the past. And I actually said this to Samantha I was like, "I know Dan's conversion story to the plant base because that happened and then it felt like everybody in InspireHUB just became vegans." But I don't know your story and so I'd love to hear what was your evolution? Did you ever eat meat or were you one of those kids that just never ate meat?

Kelly Holt No, I wasn't one of them. I became a vegetarian when I was I think 14 years old. My parents didn't fully support me at the time but they rolled with it. It was because I read a book. The book is called... The name has a curse word am I allowed to curse? 

Samantha Castro For a title of a book? Go for it.

[MUSIC: Stephen Keech “Three Meters”]

Kelly Holt The book is called ‘Skinny Bitch’ and it was popular at the time. And I remember I was reading it because I was just interested in active lifestyles and healthy living. And the book is such a covert animal rights book it's totally marketing itself as for women who are interested in living healthier lives. But it goes into detail about what happens to chickens at these large farms and reading that was just a deal breaker for me. I was like, "Well, I'm done eating animals." And yeah, I stayed vegetarian until I became a vegan in Austin. So I was probably vegetarian for 10 years or so before I became a vegan.

Karolyn Hart And Austin's a great place to be a vegan.

Kelly Holt Yeah. I remember I watched a... There's so many little coincidences in life it's great. But I watched a video by a man named Gary Yourofsky it turns out he's an animal activist who toured the world giving this popularized speech and I watched it on YouTube. He actually lives in Detroit and I met him last year and let him know that he was the reason I became a vegan. And the way he put it just resonated with me, it was very no BS, to the point, these are the facts, you do with it what you want, there's no reason not to be a vegan. And at the time it just clicked for me.

And I remember I took Dan out to dinner. That night we went to an Italian restaurant and I asked if they could make one of the dishes without butter and they made it with oil. And I sat down Dan down and I told him, "Look, I am not going to pressure you to do anything but I need you to understand why I make the decisions that I make so that you can be an advocate for me."

Samantha Castro This gesture of ordering oil instead of butter, and talking to her friend about why she did that had such a ripple effect down the line for how they were able to communicate about animals and the food they were choosing to eat. 

This however was only one part of the puzzle that Kelly was putting together during this time.

[MUSIC: Stephen Keech “Three Meters”]

Kelly Holt I was working for a great organization in Austin and we were tabling at the Texas conference for women and Amal Clooney was there speaking about her social justice work for women in the Middle East. And I was listening to her speech and I was just so inspired. And it was the first time I had really thought about the world of justice and nonprofit work and I went home that evening and was so fired up. 

I was just brainstorming about I was just wondering to myself how come all of these startups get so much investment, so much capital, so much time, energy and money investment from all of these wealthy people who want to make a difference in the world, all these media companies shine light on them. Here I am in the middle of this booming tech industry and there are so many causes that are struggling to get the same kind of support. And I'm like, "How do we find a way to identify who the high impact potential startup nonprofits are and invest time, money, resources into them?"

And so, I was thinking about building this kind of support network for nonprofits. And at the time Dan was taking a leadership course. What's it called? New Leaders Council. And he was all fired up about it and this is where he came up with the idea for Barn Sanctuary was in new leaders council and the woman who was running the organization in Austin is this total Austin hippie awesome woman. And I just had a career crush on her and thought she was amazing.

And so, I messaged her that night and I was like, "Here's all my thoughts. You know the nonprofit world better, I'd love to speak with you." And so we met up the next day. And so that, just being at that conference, set me on this path of how do I take all of my skills and my background and put it to use on something that's more important to me where it could be utilized in a more effective way than just working for another tech startup? Who they get investment and they hire people because they can afford to pay young, smart, aspiring people coming out of college because they can afford to pay for it.

But nonprofits don't have the same kind of capital investment to hold the same personnel for their teams. And so yeah, I was just thinking about that personally but on a broader scale as well. And at the same time Dan was coming up with the idea for Barn Sanctuary and talking to his dad about the fact that they have this property and what are we going to do with it. And just the stars began to align for both of us but in different ways.

Karolyn Hart Yeah. I remember when he shared with us he's like, "So, the thing I said I was going to do, this is what we're thinking of doing it's called the Barn Sanctuary." I remember I do think I got choked up the day that you told me that you were going to go off and do something great. But at InspireHUB I like to talk about how it's a landing pad for some, it's a launching pad. But I think I also now add to that is for some people it's neither they're already launching and they just descend into our circles and we got to have some of your talents and skills while in here.

[MUSIC: Cody Martin “Rejuvenation”]

Samantha Castro As Karolyn just mentioned, we knew InspireHUB was only a pitstop in their journeys. Kelly was with us for a few months and Dan while working at InspireHUB was already starting to split his time between Texas and Michigan, taking time where he could to get the farm ready.

So when Dan came to us and said the time had finally come for him to go do this role full-time, everyone was super excited. 

We’d known this day would arrive from the very beginning and to be fair, tech startup life can be anything but inspiring.   Karolyn jokingly refers to the early days of InspireHUB as un-InspireHUB because of the long hours we all spent staring at our computers and basically having no lives. It’s pretty much what you see in the movies except that when you’re living it, it’s a lot less glamorous.

We don’t shy away when talking about our un-InspireHUB days because it’s part of our history. It was the time where we were figuring out what we were, who we wanted to be as a company, and more important, who we didn’t want to be.  The one thing we DID know, was that we all wanted more for one another and seeing one of our own go and launch a dream was one of the highlights for us in a difficult season. 

In 2017 Kelly made the move from the southern comfort of Austin, Texas to northern Chelsea, Michigan to go work on Barn Sanctuary.

Here’s Kelly on how the move was for her. 

Kelly Holt It was so hard I cannot even stress it enough. I have moved so much in my life. I used to move back and forth every two years when I was a kid. All my entire life the longest I've ever spent in one place was college, four years. That was the first time I had spent that long in one place. And moving to Michigan was still the hardest move of my life because I completely underestimated seasonal depression, how long winters really get or are and how cold it gets. And so it was a long, hard, first winter. 

And it was hard because also Dan and I at the time it was like he and I were in two very different places so he had his family here and he was moving back home. And I had been separated from all of my friends and family and I was dealing with this cold, cold winter, and I don't like the cold, I'm a heat person. I have only lived in warm climates before Michigan.

So, the physical location being separated from my family was really difficult. But then also for a long time it was difficult for me to feel like Barn Sanctuary was also something that I had claim to. And I don't know if this is something that I felt as a woman or as an independent woman or what it was exactly. But I felt like I needed to keep some sense of independence and maybe run my own consulting business on the side or something so I had a backup plan for myself. Because Dan was here with his family and it was really like Dan, his dad and I. And I was so used to having my own career and having 100% control over my own life and so this was new to me in a lot of ways and I felt like I still needed some kind of sense of independence.

And so, I didn't really feel like I had the same kind of claim to Barn Sanctuary. Even though now looking back it's very clear to me I helped pick out the logo. I was there whenever we filed for nonprofit status. And I really should have always referred to myself as a cofounder but I just didn't think that I, I didn't do that when I first moved there or placed any self-claim on the work that we were doing at Barn Sanctuary. And it took me a long time to really figure out like, "Okay, this is something that I have that I basically helped co-found. These are my values that we're building into an organization." And for some reason it was a hard transition starting this and moving up here.

Karolyn Hart Yeah. Yeah. I wonder if it's interesting because I did want to talk specifically about the difference of being a woman in business as one and here is the fascinating connection. I don't know if you know I went through the exact same thing with InspireHUB. I wrote the initial business plans and the business strategies including the ones that succeeded and failed so I take full ownership for that, that's true. I literally recruited all the team. I was the one vetting them, all of that. And it wasn't until a couple years later when the board came to me and said... Because I always just called myself the chief operating officer and they were the ones that came to me along with the team. And I actually said, "No, no, I can't, there was multiple founders. I'll say co-founder but I won't say founder."

And luckily I had someone really wonderful come in and give some advice who sat down and they just said, "Did you write the business plans?" "Yes." "Did you build the team?" "Yes." Who wrote the initial functional specs for your technology?" I was like, "I did." And I wonder Kelly until you spoke about that, I wonder if that is part of the nature of being a woman is that we're caregivers? I think there is a difference between men and women and I feel like any guy coming in would be like, "Yeah, of course I'm a founder." And I had to be convinced.

I literally sat with the team and I even said to the senior team at the time I said, "I feel uncomfortable, call me president then okay but I feel uncomfortable with the founder thing because I did not do this by myself. This idea that there was this single person with the idea." And I said, "And it seems strange that I am wearing the crown of founder when I'm looking around at the people who've been with me since day one why am I wearing that?" And I'm just wondering now if that's, I thought it was a Karolyn thing until you have that same issue so.

Kelly Holt Yeah, no, that's one of the things I've also realized for a few reasons since I started working at Barn Sanctuary. The gender issues, the women in positions of power, women... There are definite sexism issues that exist for so many reasons, it's a complex problem. But as women we're taught growing up in so many different subtle cultural ways that bragging, being confident, taking power makes you unlikable. And the thing is it's taught to us and that's one part of I think why so many women don't assume complete confidence and complete leadership and complete ownership of the things that they have done their own accomplishments I think that's part of it. But I also think that the world is also taught to see women in the same way. And so, when women do have the courage to take ownership and to step up into positions of power, to put their foot down or to be directive that they are seen as unlikable and there are social and reputation repercussions that come from it.

And the thing is, there's more conversations being had about these issues but it's definitely something I've seen more and more of. It's something in the animal rights community men are put on such an enormously high pedestal. It's really funny, I mean it's funny but it's also a problem. But it's funny because women run this movement, they really do in so many ways but the men just find fame so easily and they're revered and loved. Because it's different to see a man be emotional and wear his heart on his sleeve and protect animals and there are so many women in this movement who love seeing that happen because that's more rare…

Samantha Castro The team at Barn Sanctuary was having this rapid growth due to this.  In fact, it was the rarity of seeing a male role model showing great compassion that helped bring them the attention they needed. 

Kelly Holt Dan actually took a bunch of selfie videos at the farm. We had several videos just go viral basically that's what happened. 

[MUSIC: Heartland Nights “The Family Farm”]

Samantha Castro We’ve linked to some of these viral videos on the podcast post for this episode, go to bigonsmall.biz/podcast to see them. The videos are of Dan, who - let’s be honest - is a good looking guy. He’s hanging out on this beautiful farm, chewing grass with cows Henry and Cora, frolicking in the fields and playing soccer with them, getting kisses from pigs, chilling with chickens - basically just being the absolute best friend to these farm animals. 

It’s no wonder how these videos went viral, and when they were highlighted by The Dodo, a popular media brand focused on telling animals' stories and animal rights issues, even more people were exposed to Dan’s unique story of him leaving the tech world to start Barn Sanctuary. 

Many production companies reached out to the Barn Sanctuary team, hoping they would be the ones to take their story to a wider audience. 

Kelly Holt Dan decided that he was going to vet all of the production companies and choose one. So it was down to I think two different ones and one of them was High Noon Productions which they produced the Fixer Upper show. Dan and I used to watch that in Austin. We loved watching that show. And I remember sitting on the couch with Dan one time watching Fixer Upper and we were just talking about how cool it would be if we were on TV one day like Chip and Joanna Gaines and we were doing what we loved.

And it was just funny because we ended up working with the same production company. They were the 100% right company to go with. They have a great team, such incredible, kind, cool, fun people to work with. And they came out and filmed a quick little reel that they pitched to different networks and Animal Planet bid on ours and bought our show. So, that's when we were basically signed up for a season one and High Noon came out with a crew of I don't know maybe it was 15 ish people, 12 to 15 people, and came here and filmed for six months the first season.

Karolyn Hart And what has that been like? We're talking about how hard it is to run an organization, run a nonprofit, you're actually rescuing animals while doing this learning curve and now you've got cameras following you. What's that like?

Kelly Holt It was chaos crazy. And I say that meaning inside it was chaos crazy for everyone on our team. And we held it together really well but it was very, very intense. And we know we learned so much, we know where we want to have our boundaries and the future. But at the time, because we were growing so rapidly without the show and then the show comes in and we have 15 new people filming our team everyone is working overtime, everyone's working on extra days like full weeks without two days off. It was a crazy time and I was worried that people were not going to take their two days off and I was having to remind people like, "Hey, you need to take time off. You have two days every week that you really need to take off."

[MUSIC: Brent Wood “On A Front Porch”]

But they... just the additional time that it took to film everything everyone wanted to see the show be a success and so they wanted to show up for the show but then they also wanted... Because we do have animals who are in our care and our animal care team is so dedicated to making sure that all of the animals don't suffer at all. They never have to deal with the fact that we have other things going on. That they're always cared for as individuals.

And so, they're just an incredibly dedicated team to the animals and the additional pressure that the TV show put on us from rescuing new animals to just taking up more of our time it was definitely a really difficult six months for everybody on our team. And the thing is it was also incredibly fun and we had an amazing time getting to know the film crew and watching them interact with the animals. It definitely wasn't all bad but it was a really challenging time for everyone. And I think that everything turned out really wonderfully and we learned a lot from it.

In Saved by the Barn we're not setting the example of how to run the perfect nonprofit or how to run the perfect animal sanctuary. And I think that's one of the things I'm really proud of Dan for is being honest throughout this entire journey about what we don't know. Dan has always been honest on Facebook Lives with our donors, with everyone just like, "Well, we're learning as we're going. I just found out that we need to be doing this." And I think that that's one of the things that we do really well is be open about not being the expert, still being new. But we also work really hard to make sure that we are going to the best of our abilities always reach for our mission and our purpose and hold ourselves to standards that are both achievable and do right by the work that we want to do.

Samantha Castro Being honest. Being open. Admitting you’re not the experts and seeking help. Such important themes that come through in every episode of ‘Saved By the Barn’. Kelly describes some of the feedback they’ve gotten since the show’s launch and the impact that’s had within their organization. 

Kelly Holt The amount of effort that we put into last year has really I think paid off in a few ways. One, I've been happy to see people being proud about the work that we do and so our team has been feeling and looking proud. But also we just get a ton of messages honestly from people who watch our show. And some of them are really beautiful personal messages about how the show showed up in their lives at the right time. I mean, just endlessly positive messages from people.

Karolyn Hart Just even seeing the trailers for it people are like, "And I'm never eating meat again," just seeing you guys with the chickens and hugging the cow.

Kelly Holt Yeah just like people don't get to see the farm animals. I mean, they see them on boxes of milk and brands of meat and I mean it's just this massive advertising industry has existed, the animal agriculture has poured money into for my entire life or my parents' entire life. 

And it's just so funny to see the people thinking about their food for the first time just because they're seeing a farmed animal at a sanctuary. Just the difference like the beautiful fields and the animals happy and they're being loved and they know that they're going to live out their entire life. And you can see in their eyes the emotion that we clearly recognize because it's relatable like love and playfulness. And seeing that, just that experience is like planting a seed in and of itself. That's really always been our goal is just to touch people's hearts with their stories and show them who these animals are for the first time in a real way.

Samantha Castro The  first season of “Saved by the Barn” is out now on Animal Planet. Head over to Barnsanctuary.org to meet the animals, become a donor, or learn more about plant based diets with their Kitchen Companion app. 

Before we end the show, here’s Kelly’s advice to small business owners. 

Kelly Holt I tend to find that struggle is part of it and if you're growing and you're doing something worthwhile you're going to struggle. But being kind to yourself and graceful and kind to other people is just so necessary and it's going to make you feel better about every single day if you can find that time to just be kind and reflect on the good things that you've been able to accomplish. And I think going back to our earlier conversation about personal versus work boundaries remembering that the work that you do is it's there because you're allowing it to be there and that you have a personal life separate outside of it that matters separately. And I think keeping that personal work boundary is a piece of advice I would offer to everyone who's investing a lot of their time and life into the work that they do.

CREDITS

[MUSIC: Noah Smith “New Girl”]

Samantha Castro We hope you enjoyed this episode of Big on Small and if you did, be sure to subscribe and follow us wherever you listen to podcasts.

Karolyn Hart Visit bigonsmall.biz to join our community of small businesses and find helpful resources. To learn more about what we talked about in today’s episode, read show highlights, and more, go to bigonsmall.biz/podcast and visit the post for this episode. 

Samantha Castro Is there something you want us to discuss on the podcast? Do you want to rant to us about what your business has been facing in the past few months? Whatever you may need, please call and leave us a message at 1-844-967-CHAT. That’s 1-844-967-2428. 

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Big on Small is produced and directed by me, Samantha Castro

Karolyn Hart And me Karolyn Hart. Additional support by Sue Braiden, Richard Brashear, Audrey Duncan and Sue Jenks. Music by Noah Smith. Mixed by Samantha Castro. 

For the full list of credits visit the podcast page for this episode. 

Thanks for listening!