Bailey Marriott: American Cowgirl, Business Woman, and Female Entrepreneur

 SPEAKERS

Brandy Von Holten, Bailey Marriott, transcribed by Rhiannon Niemeier

 

Brandy Von Holten 00:16

Welcome back to Big Boss Mare with Brandy Von Holten. Today I have a lady that I have known since we opened up Von Holten Ranch Her name is Bailey Marriot. I've been calling her by the wrong last name. I always ask, how do you say it? She tells me it doesn’t matter. But it's spelled M A R R I O T T. People are going to say Marriott.

 

00:47

Right, like a hotel. If we are out in a different state, we say Marriott just because that's what everybody's used to, but everybody here has lazy tongues and pronounces it as merit.

 

Brandy Von Holten 01:01

So your family is here in the Midwest. It’s the Midwest, but it’s bold, italicized, underlined, and has an exclamation mark. Your family is the true picture of what the Midwest looks like to me. So, let’s do a little bit of explaining. I love whenever I have these cowgirls on here that don't just do one thing. It's diverse, it's very diverse. I can't wait to explain Bailey to all of you. I hope that you get the opportunity to look around, because Bailey, how tall are you? I'm 5’ 10”. I put you at least 6’ 2”.

 

01:46

Sometimes I feel 6’ 2”.

 

Brandy Von Holten 01:48

So, Bailey is a tall girl, and she mounts. I went and moved some cattle with them, and I was all like, I need a mounting block. I'm chubby, and she's like, I got it. I’m thinking, God, yes, you do. She's a lot more cowgirl than I am, a lot more. She takes care of her nieces and nephews on horses, get off and get fences, move cattle, and I'm over here like, oh, Lord, I hope I don't fall in something. You're like, “You have to move that cow,” and I'm like, okay. She's the real deal. Bailey, you have two sisters and a brother, and you're the oldest. [Bailey: I'm the oldest.] Okay, she has a sister named Morgan, and a sister named Kelly, then a brother named Trey. Is his name really Trey, or is it actually Lee or something?

 

02:46

Right, Trey is the third right. His name is Mansell Lee Merritt, the third.

 

Brandy Von Holten  02:51

Mansell Lee.

 

02:52

Yep. Mansell, my grandpa's name., my dad is Jr. and then Trey is the third.

 

Brandy Von Holten  02:58

Okay, so I have a cousin named Trey and I was hanging out with some of his high school friends, and I called him Gene Allen because that's really his name. They were like why is she calling you that? And I was like Trey, for the third. They had grown up with Trey and did not have any idea that that meant the third.

 

03:26

Yeah, Trey is actually geographical. My brother is famous, infamous. I don't know which. When we started getting older, we called him Mansell, all of us girls called him Mansell. Depending on which state he goes to, people call them all sorts of names. They love the name Mansell because it's not a very common name, so he is known by many names.

 

Brandy Von Holten  03:50

He's a cowboy, and he's thick, too. You know, a lot of cowboys don't have any meat and potatoes on them. He has all the meat and potatoes. He’s big boy. Bailey, you have a BS in animal science and then a minor in business. Where'd you get that degree at?

 

04:17

At Northwest Missouri State University up in Maryville. It's about four hours from here. Whenever we went and we're looking at schools, I was accepted to MU and accepted to Springfield. When we went to Maryville, up there in the pit of Missouri weather, it was snowing in October, and I told my mom and dad this is this is where we're going.

 

Brandy Von Holten  04:43

You're like, this has got bad weather. I feel like I'm at home.

 

04:46

It’s a small community, a farming community. When I went down, I didn't know anybody. By the time I left I knew everybody. It felt like home. I couldn't walk through Walmart without seeing somebody I didn't know

 

Brandy Von Holten  05:01

So, you have a minor in business. Do you wish that you would have flip flopped them?

 

05:06

I do. On the ranch, I get to do a lot of stuff. We work very closely with our vet. I pretty much get all the animal science things that I need to fulfill that passion. The business side, the courses that I took in the business minor, are the most applicable to the things that we face in our businesses. Those things are the most applicable, the things that I reflect on, such as this is how management is set up, and management of people is set up, and we use those a lot. I reflect to those a lot. Management and marketing were two that I wish I could have gone deeper into, but with a minor you just kind of skim the top of them.

 

Brandy Von Holten  05:58

Yeah, I have a minor in physics. I use it now with archery, but I didn't have to do all that I did.

 

06:09

Like making any rockets.

 

Brandy Von Holten  06:13

I'm trying to shoot fire off of my mule and work on my arc, but I don't think I needed a minor in physics. But, I was there and I only needed a couple more classes so I went and did it. We have talked a little bit about there being multiple businesses. So, let's begin. Right now, you have your business, it just turned a year old on the last day of September. She's now been open for a year with a coffee shop, and it is called The Ranch House. Let me explain the town where she lives at now, and where her business is. It’s a town called Stover. We're in a town called Mora.  It sounds bad, but it doesn't exist. I mean, it does exist, but it's just teeny tiny, there's just a few businesses in it. There's not a post office. There are a ton of small towns around here. The next town closest to me is Cole Camp. But, if I go the backroads, the first town to me is Stover, or I can go through Cole Camp to Stover. Stover has a major intersection in it. That intersection is where people are going to the lake. You have a lot of people that do a lot of family events there. They vacation, some of them have second homes, it’s a very lucrative area. They have to drive and turn in Stover. That is one of the ways to get there. There are other ways to get there, but that's the way a lot of people go. So, their businesses are right on that road whenever people are having to slow down to turn at that intersection. Next over is a town called Versailles, and we do a lot there, it’s seven miles in between Stover and Versailles. In our area, there is a something massive, massive, thing coming and I hope that I ended up getting to do a podcast interview with the owner of that. There’s something called the Ozark Raceway. I don't know if there's another word with it, or is it just that?

 

08:31

I think so far, that's all I've seen, Ozark Raceway.

 

Brandy Von Holten  08:35

We’re not talking about a dirt track. We are talking about a paved track. We're looking at some high-end cars. Our area is about to have some major players come through it, and they're going to have to turn right there to go to that raceway. That's not very far away. How far do you think that raceway is from your coffee shop?

 

09:00

It's 15 miles and there's no other towns, no other businesses between there.

 

Brandy Von Holten  09:06

So here is Stover. It's a smaller town, but it's about to have a major player in it. Then, here's Bailey with her coffee shop. Her coffee shop is doing amazing. We have these events called Chix in the Sticks, and we take our entire group over to their coffee shop. So tell us about your coffee shop, and your main coffee maker has a name. Tell us all about your coffee shop.

 

09:35

So, we started our coffee shop in 2019. We literally walked into a house that was next to our western store. When we walked in, we said this has to be a coffee shop. That's what we saw. Almost everybody thought we were nuts. But, we really worked on a target market. We wanted a place for people to come. Whether they had five minutes to take a little break in the morning, or 20 minutes to take a break, we wanted them to be able to come get a cup of coffee and espresso. Coffee is what we love the most, a quick breakfast in and out, they can spend as much time as they need there or as little time as they need. We put a drive thru in and we are Stover’s first drive thru, except for the bank. It has been crazy. There are often 7 to 11 vehicles in the driveway every morning. The driveway moves constantly. Sometimes it's backed up all the way into the street, sometimes backed up into our western store parking lot. We wanted to make a little coffee shop that everybody felt comfortable in. When you get into four or five, even $6 cups of coffee, people are anxious about it. It makes them nervous. They don't know what they want. We brought that culture to our town. Something that you don't have to be scared of. It's funny what people are scared of. They were scared of a $5 cup of coffee, and now those people come talk to us every day and get a cup of coffee.

 

Brandy Von Holten  11:22

You're like 20 minutes away from me and I go there to get a cup of coffee, but it helps me. It’s not really set up for a large amount of people on the inside. It's more like come get it on your way to work, or the drive thru. But there are a few chairs in there and a table that's made out of an old door. It's really cute. I will go there to plan my day in the morning. Sometimes I just need to get away from my own chaos for, 30 minutes or so and drink a cup of coffee. They also serve some amazing food. They have breakfast burritos and they have cinnamon rolls. The cinnamon rolls, you better get two because you're going to be like, “Oh my gosh, that was so good.” Then they have scones, and my favorite scone is the pumpkin. I'm not some little person. If a big girl tells you the pumpkin scone is good, then you need to get two They also have breakfast burritos, and they make all sorts of sandwiches on bagels, but the sausage, tell them about your sausage.

 

12:32

Our sausage comes in five-pound rolls. We have never owned a restaurant before, so we got hooked up with a food guy who is awesome. And he said, “This is the sausage you have to use. It comes in big pound packages, so you'll have to hand patty it.” So that's what we do. We hand patty it and it is out of this world. People ask if they can find it in grocery stores. I have yet to find it in grocery stores or find anything to replace it. We run anywhere from 60 to 80 pounds of sausage a week. I was not a sausage person. I was a bacon person. We opened the coffee shop, and I had a sausage sandwich for breakfast this morning.

 

Brandy Von Holten  13:20

Yeah, that sausage is thick. I mean, it's thicker than a Snickers. Okay, like not literally.

 

13:27

I hand patty everything. We wanted fast food. We call it The Ranch House because we wanted to bring part of the ranch to town. When we're at the ranch, riding pins, working cows, whatever mom drives up and hands out the window is what you get to eat on your horse. It’s either a sandwich or breakfast burrito. It was probably going to have to last you all day, because you probably weren't going to be done working until dark. She tried to get breakfast to everybody, and good luck on the rest of the day. She'll see you when work is done.

 

Brandy Von Holten  14:04

I know that we have people that live out of state, and you have a program where they get so many points. We have people that live out of state, and the husband came with the wife, because usually a lot of wives are here by themselves. While they were checking out, he was like okay, this coffee shop that's not even in our state, we have enough rewards to get a drink for free. The wife was just like, Yeah, I have a problem. They go there every time they're in. It feels like part of their adventure here, is to come to your coffee shop. So okay, what's the name of your red coffee maker thing?

 

14:47

Oh, Scarlett, our espresso machine. We have a three head espresso machine, which when we purchased it, three heads is quite a few heads for as small of a coffee shop as we are. We said oh, we can grow into a three head machine. Oh no. We had to use all three heads the very first week. The first week was crazy. We're obviously not baristas to any level. The first week we opened, we'd all been to some barista training, and then we opened the doors, and we became baristas very quick. So, Scarlett is our big red espresso machine. She's a little temperamental, but she takes care of us.

 

Brandy Von Holten  15:27

Well, aren't all redheads a bit temperamental?

 

15:31

Yes. Yes, we have two redheads. Our grinders are the honorary redheads in the coffee shop.

 

Brandy Von Holten  15:38

I used to order something called a Nutty Squirrel. But I like something to be a little less sweet. So now they have me drinking something called a Black Eye Squirrel. I love that. I have never reheated coffee in my life. I had a person bring me a coffee, but I was already on my own cup here. I was like, oh, but then I wanted to drink it. I've never reheated coffee, and I it was good. I reheated it and it was great. I did not know that that was even an issue or even a thing. I even had to put on Facebook like, “Hey, has anybody ever reheated coffee?” Apparently, a lot of people do. If somebody is going, I'm like, “Hey, go ahead and pick me up one. I'll drink it later.” I have to do a funny story. So, one time my husband and I went to the coffee shop. Bailey has a younger brother. Here is how he should have ordered. He should have said I want this drink. I want this sandwich. Instead, Trey orders a drink, which takes a hot minute to get because everything's made right there, and she has a lot of people in there. Then, he's like, oh, yeah, I want a sandwich too, after she hands him the coffee. So, Bailey rips this man a new one.

So, here's my husband and I, and I knew Trey, I knew that she was ripping her brother a new one. My brother, I mean my husband. I mess up and I call my husband my brother at least five to ten times a year. It is so gross that I mess up on that. I don't know why; I think because I love him so much and I love my brother so much. But my husband was like, dude, whenever we order, we need to get it all together. I was like, okay. Afterwards, he was like, I like her. That person needs to order their food and their drink together next time. He was like, “Finally somebody that's standing up for the business owners too.” Eventually I told him that's her brother. He was almost crushed that she wasn't just ripping this cowboy a new one about ordered his food and his drink together. I loved it. Nobody else was there in the building. We felt like a dog at a tennis match. We were thought it was awesome to get to watch. Then Trey said Okay, I'm sorry, I'll do that. He knew he was in the wrong. Bailey got ahold of him.

 

18:32

That’s his famous saying, next time. Oh, thank you. Next time you'll get it.

 

Brandy Von Holten  18:38

So the coffee shop is super cute. I think that house is the oldest house in Stover. I almost called it Windsor, and then I went to Warsaw. There are some other small towns around here. But it's the oldest house.

 

18:54

Yes. It is basically a four room house. The reason you can tell that is because all four floors are wood floors, but they are different wooden floors, depending on what was popular in that decade. The original house, when that land was donated to the city, that was the first lot of land separated off to an individual. He built the first little shack on it.

 

Brandy Von Holten  19:24

Right next door to the coffee shop is something called Rocking M Western Emporium. Rocking M, M for the last name of Marriott, and then Western, and then why did you go with the word Emporium?

 

19:43

Because my mom is a literary nerd and loves the Word Emporium.

 

Brandy Von Holten  19:50

On our website, we have a Country Tough Mercantile. We have people struggling with mercantile. A mercantile is where you buy stuff. If you see Country Tough Mercantile, you click on it and you go look see what I have for sale, and you shop.

 

20:10

An Emporium means an assortment of things. From the time that we started, we have had belts, purses, candles, home décor, clothing, boots, and saddles. We even rent tuxedos. We have tons of stuff. [Brandy: you even shape hats.] We do, we have custom shaped cowboy hats. We clean hats. We had dry cleaning for a while. It is truly an emporium, we do so many things. That’s literally what the word means, is all of the things, and that's what we do at the store.

 

Brandy Von Holten  20:51

It's like the clothing form of the word casserole. You couldn't call your store Rocking M Western Casserole.

 

20:59

I bet people would remember casserole.

 

Brandy Von Holten  21:03

Here are things that I have purchased from you all. I have a lot of gifts or prizes for events in the past when we had to do a lot of gifts, and now we do ribbons and buckles mostly. We have bought these little zipper pouches that said boss lady on them. I'm actually looking at one right now as we're talking. I have bought some of the most glittered, rhinestoned, beautiful sunglasses there. I have my favorite knife I bought from there. I've bought wild rags. The t-shirt I have on that’s striped, my purse. I get so many compliments on this. It's a purse that goes across my body and then it has at least 12-inch fringe on both sides. I get so many compliments on that. I'm just walking around with a billboard saying Rocking M, it’s in Stover, you can look them up online. So let me think here, I think I've bought some wild rags from you, then, you just discontinued it, but you used to have something called the loft upstairs, which was like a resale. You decided to pull an iron out of the fire. I understand that, we've had to do the same thing with our businesses. We grew, grew, grew, and then we're like, man, that's too much. That's a nickel standing in the way of $1. It was too much time commitment. We've had to cut back and scale back on things. We’re always swinging. We're always trying. There are things like chicks in the sticks. We bring either a limo or a charter bus. Right now, we were leaning towards the charter buses because you have captain's chairs, but a lot of people have never ridden in a limo. They’re like, “Oh, we want to ride in a limo!” Then they say, “Next time I come back, I want you to have the charter bus,” because to get in the limo, you have to bend over, get up in there, and then you have to scoot a all the way to the front. Anyway, we bring charter buses now to the Rocking M Western Emporium. They do after our shopping for us, which has been nice. They have Alexa. Alexa is in there playing music, but I'm able to talk to it and turn it up and all sorts of stuff. I'm like, “Alexa, play this,” and I'm like, “Louder.” It’s nice come in there after hours, and we get to have this cool event. With Rocking M Western Emporium, last year were the president of the Stover Chamber of Commerce. No now you're on the board for Versailles. What are the benefits of being active with your chamber of commerce?

 

23:56

With the Stover chamber, we were the president, we, I say we, my sister and I were officers. We got a lot of benefits because we became the people that, if anybody needed anything in town for business, or they were looking for a specific product, we became a place that they come to no matter what. If we didn't have an answer for them, we would find an answer for them. When I got elected president, I had things that I knew I needed in my business for my business to succeed. I felt like those other businesses in town, if they had those same benefits, they would also see some success in those things. As president, I was able to implement those things and we were able to make events bigger. We struggle with a mindset of the Chamber of Commerce is another community organization. We fought that a little bit. It's not a community organization, it's a business organization. Businesses belong to chambers to earn money, and they have to be profitable. The chamber has to do things. Trash pickups are great, and all those other events are great events, but if they are not bringing business to your businesses, they do not need to be chamber events. That’s something that we tried changing, the mindset. When we worked on chamber, we worked on it for our business

 

Brandy Von Holten  25:47

I've already talked about the size of my town of Mora. We’re really close to Sedalia. Sedalia is where the State Fair is for Missouri, and there's a college there, State Fair Community College, and there's a health center. It’s a large town, but not a big city. We’re in that county, but our school taxes go to the neighboring town, Cole Camp. I am closer in back roads to Stover, and that's in a different county. I'm in Pettis County, but a lot of my taxes go to a county called Benton County. But I'm actually closer to businesses in Morgan County. We are literally like the doughnut hole. I have an 816 telephone number, which is Kansas City, then we have a 660 for the business. We're so confusing to people. What that means is, whenever you come to our area, you have so many businesses and mom and pops and small-town things. You’re in the middle of a star. You can go and have these like unique experiences. So, what we have done, most of our income does not come from local people. Last year, or a couple of years ago, we had an event where we had people from 20 states and three countries. Whenever they come here, they want to experience something. With the cost of fuel prices going up, whenever they come here, I want them to spend an extra day and really have a really cool event to happen. I've joined the Chamber of Commerce with Stover, because Stover is also going to have that raceway. Then we have Versailles. Versailles has something called an apple festival. I think about 30,000 people come to that, I don't really know the numbers.

 

28:00

I think the last one was 24,000. It is Missouri's largest one day festival. I know that's what it was a couple years ago. I don't know if it continues to hold that name.

 

Brandy Von Holten  28:13

Who cares if they get second place, it's still big. On the other side of us, Sedalia has everything you're going to want. It has a Walmart, a JCPenney, there are a lot of barbecue places. Then Warrensburg, in between like Sedalia and Warrensburg, is Whiteman Air Force Base, which brings in a ton of military. Our area is so rich with small businesses. I will tell you if you go and buy a $20 shirt from somebody in one of these small towns, we're so appreciative. Every time you buy a shirt, we do a little happy dance. A lot of people do not realize the importance of a Chamber of Commerce. I didn't, I just thought that was something that banks did or something. Wherever you're going, you need to type in that town's name. followed by Chamber of Commerce, and you will find out all the businesses. Maybe not all of them, some of them don't take part in the Chamber of Commerce, but you're going to be able to get access to a lot of them. You'll be able to start finding whatever you're looking for. So we have talked about the Ranch House, which is the coffee shop. We've talked about Rocking M Western Emporium. Let’s talk about your cattle operation. You don't usually birth or have calves. You don't have a cow-calf operation, correct? [Bailey: We do.] Oh, okay. I was under the impression that you bought them and then you got them bigger, then they took them from you all to a feedlot. [Bailey: We do that too.] Okay, I was just right.

 

30:09

We get to play a little bit in multiple sectors of the beef industry. We have a cow calf operation. We calve primarily in the spring, but we are also working on a fall herd. That's where we get our baby calves. We take them all the way up to close to 900 pounds, feed them out to 900 pounds, and then sell them and they go into a feedlot.

 

Brandy Von Holten  30:41

In a feedlot, they usually go from 900 to how much weight?

 

30:45

It depends on the animal and when the animal is ready for slaughter and harvest. That could be anywhere from 1200 pounds to 1400 pounds.1400 is a pretty big calf, but our cattle are pretty moderate, pretty medium, right in the middle. So they're going to weigh around 1200 when they finish,

 

Brandy Von Holten  31:10

So you take care of about two-thirds of their weight that they're going to eat. When they leave you, they just have that last third to put on. So, tell us about what breed you use.

 

31:26

Yeah, so we use a Gelbvieh balancer breed. Balancer is a combination Gelbvieh and Angus cattle. We use a lot of registered Gelbvieh bulls, some balancers, and then our cows are Gelbvieh. We retain quite a few heifers a year, we don't buy a lot of outside cattle specifically keep the breed going and our genetics continuing. We buy outside bulls, registered seedstock Gelbvieh or balancer bulls to put on our cows.

 

Brandy Von Holten  32:01

I told you she’s the real deal because I have never heard of Gelbvieh. Spell that for me.

 

32:09

G E L B V I E H. A very German word, they're German originated.

 

Brandy Von Holten  32:18

I'm so sorry that I just asked you to do that in front of everybody. Because I'm like, “What's this word she's saying?” Why did you go with that breed?

 

32:27

My mom grew up in eastern Wyoming and they raised Gelbvieh cattle out there. They’re red, they're pretty, they're very growthy calves, they get to a good size and grow fast. But mainly the Gelbvieh has mothering abilities. We love so much when our cow calves and they're ready to take care of their calf. They have extremely high milking abilities as well. They are something that can milk enough to grow a big calf, but it doesn’t take so much out of her body that she loses condition and doesn't breed back. So she's a great in between cow that can have a calf, breed back, and be ready to do her job again.

 

Brandy Von Holten  33:17

I just learned something during my own podcast. This is great. I probably I will go back and listen to this again because I like to listen to things more than once, it helps me retain. But wow, that's really cool. Okay, so tell us about the working of the cattle pens. What goes into that, and you do that mostly from horseback? Or do you do it from foot? Or do you use ATVs?

 

33:44

All our cow calf pairs and whatever is in our feed yard, we have a stocker yard, we do primarily on horseback. My dad builds custom pipe and saccharide fence and cattle handling facilities. All of our alleys are big enough to swing a gate on a horse. We use our horses to gather cows, we use them to work them in the pens. We think that that's the best option for us. Our cows are fairly gentle. I take care of a set of cows at my house. I get in trouble for them being too gentle. I spend a lot of time out in them and we like to be out in them. To be able to ride your horse through and them not scatter four ways to the wind. We do everything on horseback. My mom checks cows in a Ranger. She's usually got a grandbaby or two with her. So they do a little Ranger, like our heifers are calving right now. They're gentle, she can drive up to him in the Ranger and tag calves and make sure everything's okay. But as for moving and sorting and those types of things, they are all done horseback.

 

Brandy Von Holten  35:02

What's your favorite horses name?

 

35:04

I have a gelding and a mare, a split gilding. My brother and I share him and his name is T.L., which stands for true love.

 

Brandy Von Holten  35:15

Oh gosh. Okay.

 

35:17

The guy that we bought him, we bought him kind of through another guy, but he got his name because the man that owned him, his wife or girlfriend, paid all of his horse bills, and they said that was true love.

 

Brandy Von Holten  35:33

Oh, okay, so his name is true love.

 

35:34

T.L. stands for true love.

 

Brandy Von Holten  35:38

Okay. So tell us about your mare.

 

35:41

My little red roan mare, bay roan mare, she's actually a mare that we raised. My dad bought a mare from a sale and then she had this colt. Her name is Rockin’ M Ruby. She’s been out here several times. It's what Larkin competes on.

 

Brandy Von Holten  35:58

Larkin is her nice. [Bailey: No, cousin.] Oh, cousin, okay.

 

36:03

She's one of my second children. Larkin started riding her last spring at the ranch, and then I have ridden her, we've had some issues keeping her sound. I hadn't been riding her as much and I have several other irons in the fire. Larkin started riding her and she is bred to a gypsy stud. She is getting ready to have her first colt here in the next couple of months.

 

Brandy Von Holten  36:32

So your mom, I think it's your mom, is a huge fan of the gypsies. [Bailey: Yes.] Okay. That does not seem like, “Oh, yeah, we're really ranchy and we have our gypsies.”

 

36:45

My mom is a gypsy at heart. Back in 2010, we boarded some horses for a gal, and she had a half Clydesdale, half gypsy colt. We weaned the colt at our place. That was something we offered whenever we boarded these horses. That little mare, which she's still around, my mom's getting ready to maybe have a colt out of her, that little filly was it. That was the spark of my mom's love for gypsies, and she's not colored up. She looks like a Clydesdale like her mother. But this filly, whenever she was four or five months old, you could literally stand at the fence and holler for her, and she would leave her mother to come to you. So, this big Gypsy, all the hoopla about their disposition, it’s true. It was true for her. She was just so sweet and so gentle and just wanted to please. She wasn't rude. She wasn't invasive. She wanted to be in your back pocket, but still had a ton of respect and my mom fell in love with them. So now we have lots of gypsies.

 

Brandy Von Holten  38:04

 I did not grow up with a gaited horse at all. Now I have a Missouri Fox Trotter mule and a Tennessee Walker mule. It works. I do dressage with the Tennessee Walker, and I do mounted archery with the Fox Trotter. I'm like, well, I guess that cookie cutter mold that you had for me is just not going to work, right.

 

38:34

Absolutely. We didn't grow up with draft horses. In the ranch horse type world, draft crosses have been super popular, quarter horses and drafts. My mom grew up with draft horses. They fed hay with draft horses and wagon. My mom always has loved the wagons and we got into racing, racing wagons and they bought a team. I don't know what it is, but once you buy one team, you just feel like you need more teams. So, we have two full team Percheron teams now. We bred our Percheron mares to gypsies. So we have a team of gypsy Percheron, as well as whatever comes this year out of the gypsies and draft process,

 

Brandy Von Holten  39:27

I have a salty mare named Glamour, and Glamour is a little walking refrigerator. She’s not that tall, but she's getting the job done. I think that I'm going to end up breeding her to a draft horse, because I'm big. You know what I mean? I'm bigger. We might as well just go there, but I still love the quarter horses. Even though I've got like this big casserole of a herd. We have an Appaloosa out there, two paint horses that look like quarter horses, and then the two mules, but I'll just go ahead and do a sport. I think a sport horse is half quarter horse half draft, or am I wrong about that? Or do you know? I thought that was what a sport horse was. Yeah, because they've still got their athletic ability but then they're just a little bit beefier.

 

40:20

Absolutely. Yeah. My mom likes her horses like she grew children, pretty squatty.

 

Brandy Von Holten  40:27

Oh my gosh. I hear squatty and I think about short.

 

40:30

Stout and squatty.

 

Brandy Von Holten  40:32

You had talked about all these nieces and nephews. You’re not quite 30 yet, you’re underneath there for a little bit longer. I know whenever I hit 30, I was like, huh, but then when I hit 31, 31 was like, “Well, gosh, dang, I'm actually here, pump the brakes.” You’re actually fostering a boy right now, a teenager. There we go, we're just going to skip the baby years and just go right into a 13-year-old boy.

 

41:07

I've been known to go in all in, and we went all in. We have the opportunity to work with him and provide some better things for him. So we're

 

Brandy Von Holten  41:18

You’re a mama.

 

41:20

Yes, I you know, had a boy, he’s 13.

 

Brandy Von Holten  41:25

“13 inches?” No, no, he’s 13

 

41:27

 It's been great. Being so close to the ranch. We grew up doing hard work, it didn't matter what you were doing. There's some old verbiage that goes with bullfrogs. If you're hunting bullfrogs be the best Bullfrog Hunter you can be. That's kind of what I've taking so literally, at this point, whatever you're doing, it doesn't matter if you're scraping stalls or showing horses or whatever, you do the best to your ability, you give 110%. That's how I grew up. That's how my boyfriend grew up. We have this 13-year-old and he has never worked so much in his life.

 

Brandy Von Holten  42:12

That’s normal for you. “What do you do for fun?”  “Oh, I do the jobs that I wanted to do the other day, I work. But, we also play.” Let's talk about this boyfriend Joe. You've been with him for several years, and he's a logger?

 

42:28

Yeah, he and his partner own a sawmill, and he cuts all the trees for the sawmill.

 

Brandy Von Holten  42:34

Mostly walnut, cedar, or does it even matter?

 

42:37

\It kind of depends on the time of the year, but walnut, cedar, oak, lots of white oak. So actually, the white oak, which I am being an ag junkie, I like to know all the backstory and what things are going to be for. The white oak that they cut, they call stave logs, and those logs go to make whiskey barrels.

 

Brandy Von Holten  43:02

Well he's making the world a better place.

 

43:05

Absolutely.

 

Brandy Von Holten  43:10

I know that for us, we've had to cut walnut down here before to help pay commercial property taxes, because that says hello every year. Walnut logging has saved us in the past. You do a lot for the beef industry, other than being a rancher. You are the Morgan County, or Morgan Cattleman Association Vice President or how do I say that?

 

43:43

Yep, the Morgan County Cattlemen’s Vice President. The way Cattlemen’s works is there are county affiliates in almost every county. In our county, we do what we can as cattlemen, we get together and have meetings, we bring information to our cattlemen and help sponsor things. May is beef month, so that's something we do, we make sure that we either put something in the newspaper, stuff like that to promote beef and promote cattle in Morgan County.

 

Brandy Von Holten  44:19

Okay. You are also very active 4-H and FFA mentor for beef.

 

44:26

Yes. So, I grew up in 4-H. Stover didn't have FFA until I was a senior so I was extremely involved in 4-H. I love cattle, I love beef and all of everything that entails that, so it was my goal as a 4-H member to be able to give back to other kids. 4-H is was my thing in high school. I didn't really participate in sports or anything like that. I wanted to be at home. I showed cattle through the summers. My goal is to come back and provide something to kids that don't have the opportunity to be around cattle. They don't have the space to keep a cow or a calf. What we do, is I pull 10 steers out of our herd as weanlings, and we break those steers. I did eight this year. We broke those steers to lead. I rent out those steers and help mentor those kids. I am their show mom/slash coach. We work together and we have all these calves in a barn tied up, and we wash calves every week, we lead every week, and we practice showmanship. We also haul to all of their shows, we go to about six shows including the Missouri State Fair. At the Missouri State Fair, we enter the carcass contest. Not only do we physically show, at the state fair, but our calves get loaded up and are harvested, and they actually judge their physical carcasses. Which is kind of my whole deal. What I try to stress the most is we're cattle ranchers, because we're providing beef for America to eat. So that's something that I push really hard with that state fair program, the carcass show, we're able to do that and get actual physical data back on our cattle. This is how they grade; this is what they yield. That’s something that's great information for the ranch as well.

 

Brandy Von Holten  46:32

Okay, so what's the highest you have ever ranked in anything, or placed?

 

46:37

Last year, we didn't go to the state fair because of everything going on. They didn't hold the carcass contest. The first year at our carcass contest, I had a steer place top four in the carcass, and then all three of our steers placed in the top 15 of the actual carcass judging. We go to several state shows, several county shows, and we love it. I have several kids that are really coming into their showmanship, and they're just really hard to beat in showmanship. That’s always my favorite. We might not be everybody's flavor, not every judge’s type of cattle at county fairs or wherever fairs, but he can't deny my kids are working on showmanship

 

Brandy Von Holten  47:31

 I've competed some before. But now, I get so much joy in the people that I coach and seeing them

no place well or finally, do you know do whatever they're trying to do if it's a flying lead change, or they're finally trying to walk or trot, and they're working on transitions. Whenever they get it, I feel so much pride. I can see that with your mentor program that you have going on with 4-H and FFA. Those are your kids.

 

48:15

Oh, they are my kids. Their parents are there, and their parents help, but they are my kids. I will back them up. If there are any issues, I take care of it. If they've done something wrong, we discuss it. But they are my kids. I expect them to act a certain way. When we go to shows, we have so much fun. I thought with this program, whenever I first started, I thought I'm going to change these kids’ lives, and they have truly changed mine. It has been amazing. We all cry together. You know, I've been putting stickers on trailers for a lot of years. Yeah, I cry every year, they cry every year, you know. And then in three months, we'll start over. We get to start this process all over and just to see the growth from year to year, I've pretty much retained all of my kids. I started with three. Then I had eight, and then this year, one of them aged out this year so I have another eight, and two of them will age out next year. I have two cousins that do it with me. There is obviously a large age gap between me and them. I would have never been as close to them if I wouldn't have done this right. So, it's been it's been amazing.

 

Brandy Von Holten  49:33

Here we are, you're 11 years younger than me, but I think I'm a better woman after going through and helping others. I think it's mellowed me out. But, I'm a lot firmer than what I used to be because now I've went through a bunch of crap and all this stuff. I think being a mentor has made me a better person. I'm not, I don't know if sensitive to their needs, I don't know how to explain it, but I think it's made me a lot more well-rounded, and made me speak a little bit more clearly.

 

50:15

Filling out some people's needs and learning, learning how people learn is something that has been detrimental in that mentorship, because not all of them see the same things or hear the same things. You might be talking to four kids at the same time, and they all perceive what you say differently. Being able to kind of connect on a different level and know their learning style has made me more perceptive to other people, not just kids. To realize that not everybody thinks, I can't even imagine people not thinking the way I think, but now I know it's just not first nature to put your hand a certain way or whatever. So that's been it, definitely the well-rounded.

 

Brandy Von Holten  51:06

I have a young boy, he's 15 right now, that cleans in the stall barn. We started off at so much money per hour. I was not happy with his performance and actually dropped his pay by $1. I said whenever you can do your job better, I'll raise your pay back up. Instead of firing him and getting rid of him, I tried to motivate him. A boy is different than a girl with a lot of the ways we think. I have to make him a list,  and then I have him come in, talk to me throughout the list, and then I will spot checks stuff as we help develop him into an even better employee. But here's this 15-year-old boy, and I'm putting some work in. Whoever is his future employer, you better write me a thank you note for all the stuff I'm going through right now with him. He's not a bad employee. He's just a 15-year-old boy, nothing wrong with that. It has to happen. He'll probably end up managing our boarding barn by the time that we get him molded. We're going to be like, you don't get to go anywhere. You stay right here, please. Thank you.

 

52:27

That’s something we found with these kids. I tell them to treat it like a job. If the barn does not look better than the condition that you found it in, you're not done. If somebody is scooping poop, you need to be scooping, you need to find something to do. I try to instill, they have young mind you, we're just molding you into adult minds. You hope that when they become adults, they remember those things, they don't let somebody work, and then not work. My whole goal is to make sure that they are a good person and want to work hard. That they find satisfaction in a job well done,

 

Brandy Von Holten  53:17

Our worker here, his name is Liam, he's moved up and got his dollar back. Something that I'm always having to say to him is don't be a 90% guy, be a 100% guy, and he's always like I know, I know. And Now my husband's even saying it and me and him argue like cats and dogs, because he will do a project almost completely. This year is our completion year. He probably won't listen to this unless I force him to so I can just say whatever I want to. Podcasts are not his thing. So anyways, we keep telling him, and I love having my husband on board, but Liam doesn't understand that my husband's been a 90% guy. Now, he's we have a list, we've got these posters up that are divided by topics of our projects that we have to do. We're marking things off because he's getting where he's 100%. It's just good to have everybody on board with helping develop Liam. So, what are some of the business things that you were like, “Oh, if somebody would have told me that.” Here we are in this agriculture business, agriculture-based business, that's who our clientele is. If somebody would have told me how important social media. and TikTok, and video, and being able to do nice photography was… That is such a big part of my business. Tell me some things that you wish somebody would have told you if you would have listened. A lot of times people could right point people, they could have told it to me, but I would have learned through scars, not words, a lot of times.

 

55:19

I guess for both businesses would be stay true to who you are. In our western store, several times we've bought stuff, we don't like, but someone else might like it. Well, people shop with us because they love us, and they love our style. If there's something in there that is not our style, it does not sell well. Developing the foundation of our business, we did that with the coffee shop, but we've tried a few things. People have suggested, oh, you should try this. We've tried it, and it didn't go over well, because it wasn't something that we believed in. So, staying true to yourself. Obviously, you think about those things now, having a different perception than what you would if somebody would have just told you that. We are pretty true to ourselves people. In buying decisions, I am deviated a little bit. I am not a camo person; I don't enjoy looking like a tree. We'd put camo stuff in, and some stuff, I was like, oh, that's not bad. But some stuff we put in was just over the top, and it doesn't sell because that's not our brand. That is not the brand that we ride for type of deal. I would say it would be the same in the coffee shop. We would try some different things, and it just was a little too far outside of that target market, outside of that mission that we set. Setting your mission statement for your business has been the biggest game changer for us. When we started the coffee shop, our mission was to create coffee culture for our community. If it didn’t fall within that, we didn't do it. With the store, we worked backwards, we're just now hitting a new lick in the store. We’re just grabbing gears right now, and it seems to be building and getting bigger. We have done some of those foundation type things, setting our mission, only doing things that we believe in even if we don't know that we have the money in the pockets. Companies that we believe in, we go ahead and bring in and we're finding the more we believe in our stuff. Yep. You know, that's something that we set a goal for. If we don't believe in the company behind the products, we don't carry it. That has been in the last six months that we've made that change. I think that we're already seeing the fruits of that labor.

 

Brandy Von Holten  58:29

We switched to USA made t-shirts, and then USA made hoodies, and they were expensive. We charge people $60 for it because it costs us so much more. It scared us to death with putting so much money into a product. I don't want to sell a hoodie that's not USA made. It’s the same thing with my leggings, my T shirts, everything that we can buy USA made, we do. We stand behind our product. People stand behind us because they know that we're trying. The company that we're buying a hoodie, from that means a lot to them, because it does cost more. That's because we are actually paying a worker that's there, it's going to help our whole entire country. I know our country needs some help right now. So, I don't mind being the one that's just like, hey, if you want this hoodie, you're just going to have to pay a little bit more for it, but it's going to last you longer.

 

59:35

That’s what we found on the ranch. We prefer higher quality stuff because we're hard on stuff. We expect jeans to last the way we need them to last, so those are the companies that we carry. We have literally gotten saddle pads in, gave them to the cowboys at the ranch, and said use these and tell us what you think. In two weeks, they were so disappointed. These pads they hid were coming apart. We took them all, shipped them back, and don't carry that company anymore. We do not carry a company that doesn't believe in what we believe in as a family, as a business, for their community. Those things are important to us.

 

Brandy Von Holten  1:00:19

You talk about being hard on clothes. Oh my God, tried to be a big chested female. I am hard on bras. I'm hard on underwear. I'm hard on socks. Everything that you do not get to see is struggling. Right now, you need to say a little prayer for all of my undergarments. My pants, oh my gosh, one time I was looking at the inner thighs of my jeans, and the patch had been patched.

 

1:00:47

My granny gets to where she says I'll use these jeans. I'll use the legs for patches, but I'm not patching these again. She won't do it.

 

Brandy Von Holten  1:00:55

I just did a video not too long ago about waste not want not and here's my boots, part of the heel was gone, and it was busted out on the side. I was like, “Oh, I don't want to put on the new boots. Because when I put on new boots, I'm not going to think about anything else in the world other than those boots. If you want to forget your troubles, put on a new pair of boots. You won't think about anything. You'll ow, my pinky toe, ow my heel. That's all you're going to think about.”

Okay, so how do they find you? How do they find Rocking M Western Emporium, how do they find the Ranch House, how did they find the cattle operation? Do you sell beef to individuals?

 

1:01:40

We do sell beef to individuals. It's as they're ready. But pretty much everything is run through our Facebook page, either the Ranch House or the Western Emporium. I run both Facebooks along with my mom and my sister. So, our Rocking M Ranch Western Emporium is the first letters, R M R W E, or Rocking M Ranch Western Emporium is how you can find that. I believe our Facebook handle is RMRWE. Then the coffee shop is The Ranch House Coffee. There are other ranch houses, it's The Ranch House Coffee specifically.

 

Brandy Von Holten  1:02:25

Whenever they click on that on Facebook, it'll say Stover. [Bailey: Yes, it will say in Stover.] Are there any big things that you have where you're like, “oh my gosh, here's what we've got coming up.”

 

1:02:39

Yeath, we are trying. with the Western Emporium, to do an event every other month. Right now, we are gearing up for our fashion show. We had a fashion show in 2019 and it was a blast. We have a taco bar and that type of deal. then we do a fashion show with local models. Right now, we are working with a company, hopefully, an American made jean company, Kimes Ranch, to come and do personal fittings and they are going to be our feature jean for the fashion show. It’ll be right there. We usually call it Small Town Saturday Night, and it is right in the middle of Stover at the store. We use the porch for our runway. Like I said, we use local models, and we have every body shape and every age for models because we think that's extremely important. It will be a fun night, a fun small town Saturday night. We've talked about having a band, we're still working on those things, but it will be a night as the first Saturday in June. So, we are getting ready for that.

 

Brandy Von Holten  1:03:52

So last year I went, it was the first time because we're usually prisoners in paradise here. We don't get to leave because we have people here and we have to be here. Everything was really calm for Fourth of July, so we got to go to your parents’ house. You weren't there because you spent that holiday with Joe, the boyfriend. They had Dexter Roberts there, who got third on American Idol or on The Voice? Third on the voice in 2019. I didn't know that he was from The Voice and I'm like, dang, that boy can sing. I'll book him, I want to help his career. I know he'd already helped himself and he had won some stuff, but we booked him to come back in October, Then the firework show that your family put on was better than what I've seen it some towns. They brought their a-game and I was like, what's going on? I did not know that y'all were doing this. It was amazing. You just never know what's going on in small town USA. She has some big business things going on, and if you're ever interested in purchasing, you ship right?

 

1:05:09

Yes, our website is rmrwe.com and we ship. The website just started this year, so everything that's new in the store goes up on the website. You can pretty much shop whatever on there, and if you use in the search bar if you use Bailey, my name Bailey, it brings up my personal favorites for the store.

 

Brandy Von Holten  1:05:36

This is called Big Boss Mare, Bailey's a Big Boss Mare, Brandy is a Big Boss Mare. She's taller, so hers looks better because it's spread out.\ I'm just letting you know for all the people out there that are looking for clothes, this is going to help out some people okay, right.

 

1:05:55

By no means am I a spokesperson for bigger girls, but I've been a bigger girl for a long time. I've spent a lot of life as a big girl.

 

Brandy Von Holten  1:06:04

All right. Well, hey, thank y'all for tuning in to Big Boss Mare. If you are having difficulty finding anything, you can just make sure and just reach out to me and I can help you get connected with them. So y'all have a wonderful day. and we'll see you next time right here at Big Boss Mare with Brandy Von Holten.