In today’s episode, Lauren & Taylor talk all about what it means to be a multi-passionate entrepreneur, how to connect different “arms” of your business with a uniting string, what an umbrella business model looks like and how you can keep your audience engaged throughout it all. You can find Lauren HERE!
Why Being Multi-Passionate Can Be A Good Thing with Lauren Denny
Lauren Denny is a multi-passionate business owner whose business started with Simply Stained Shop – a sign decor shop focused on providing teachers with cute classroom signs and decor. Her business grew when she and her husband took ranching on as their next adventure – they now do ranch tours for classes and continue to provide educational animal experiences! Their latest venture is their children’s book!
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BULLET POINTS FROM THIS EPISODE:
- What does hustle like a mother mean to you?
- I’m hoping that hustling like a mother means that I’m setting a good example for our family to know that we can pivot… we can change. I try to always encourage our kids to focus on going after what you want and you don’t have to stay stagnant and that there are lots of different ways that you can reach your goals by just inserting an hour here and an hour here. As a mom, you have to really use your time wisely.
- Tell us how you came up with Simply Stain Shop. Where did that idea come from? How did it evolve?
- I wanted my classroom to feel like home. I wanted to build things for my classroom that were intentional and made it relevant to the students. So I started making things. Our focus is a lot on teachers and how we can serve them. The very backbone of it was building an environment for the classroom. So building signs that would go in there, personalized things that teachers can give to their students as gifts or give to their teammates, and whatnot.
- You also own and live on a ranch – tell us a little bit about the ranch and like how that got started?
- We started in Idaho and had a nice ranch that we had begun and we had no knowledge about starting a ranch at all. We just knew we were passionate about living in our means, I guess you could say like living off the land, learning to grow the food, and learning where your food comes from. And now we moved to Oklahoma on a pretty large ranch where we are building it from the ground up.
- So our ranch is going to allow us to invite classes and do field trips and giving people the opportunity to see what it feels like to live on a ranch and meet animals.
- You wrote a children’s book that centers around the animals in your ranch. Tell us about your children’s book and how this came about.
- it goes back to how do we allow people to understand that we’re one in the same person and teaching is our backbone teaching is what I know and what I love. And so writing a children’s book, I was like, this has to be something that teachers can be able to use in their classroom. And so how do I support the teachers? So, we started this children’s book based off of our ranch because it’s a real story.
- The children’s book wrote itself. Honestly, we were able to just capture videos of the animals, actually doing the tasks. And we wanted the students to be able to engage with it in both ways. So, so much of technology is integrated. It’s incredible in our kids’ lives.
- When we showed him that there were videos attached, it’s like a whole thing now. And it’s so much fun, you know, not just for classroom-aged kids, but for toddlers to see the animals and connect – like this is a cartoon, a book, but they’re also real animals and real life. And that is so fun and educational for him to connect to that as a toddler. We are trying to capture the kids in all different stages of their life as they go through it.
- The book is called Winston and the Missing Apples – you can get it off of Amazon or you can buy it directly from us on simplystainedshop.com or simplycountryranch.com
- When it comes to being multi-passionate and bringing all of these ideas to life and making sure that they make sense, do you think that this has helped grow your business, or has it slowed your growth down?
- I would like to say that it has encouraged growth in a lot of different areas, because a lot of times in businesses, people come for one thing and then it’s like a one and done, and they don’t need you anymore. They don’t stick around. So then constantly being able to pivot and change and continue to give your audience new avenues to come back for – that is always beneficial.
- What tips do you have for others who are putting together these multi-passionate businesses and wanting to up that engagement and really increase that social presence for their business?
- Having content that engages your audience is always your first and foremost. So find what speaks to your audience and stick with that.
- Using a wide variety of platforms to reach different types of audiences has been really helpful.
- I think that really is beneficial for a lot of business owners that are multi-passionate because it allows them to have multiple streams of revenue and that’s important.
- Are there any last words of advice you want to give our listeners today?
- I would just say to keep following your dreams and pivot – when you feel like you have a new idea that you would like to continue to grow towards, and gosh, just keep showing up for your audience.
- Where can my listeners find you?
