Welcome Everyone!

Write down our goals and timelines: 

We eat and breathe our business; we must keep the vision alive.  

We constantly share these goals with those who are part of our team and anybody who will listen. 

Our self-reliant homestead plays an important part of our profitable business. We can't have one without the other. 

This is a must and the most important step of all. 

"Write your vision and make it plain."

Next, it's time Plan:  

We started by gathering all our goals (they were written down) and we added our plan of action. Like football, the goal is the touchdown, but how are we going to get that touchdown? 

I, Angela assign homestead lists with tasks on them to my husband Dean and anyone that is part of our team.  I often tease him and tell him, "I'm the brains, you're the "brawn" or "bronze as I am the gold." 

We put our tasks in order according to what needs to be accomplished each day, each week, by easiest to hardest, and according to the ages of our team members. 

Everyone has an ongoing list. We discuss the tasks that needs to be completed with each team member. 

We mark off of the list each accomplished tasks. It's called the hack snowball method (thanks Dave Ramsey); we use it to knock out our tasks one by one.

We stick to a "To Do List".  Our lists change each week. Sometimes day by day.

Be a good steward: 

Creating a unique space and experience for our prominent guests can get expensive, but by incorporating free marketing strategies and less expensive amenities it will not cost as much money as you think. 

There are many platforms that we do not have to pay to list our property. 

We also look out for bargains when purchasing items for our farm stay. Least expensive doesn't necessarily mean cheap. We are just being good stewards. 

We are always looking into resources on being debt free. We currently are debt free. When we started our farm stay, we were not. 

Being homesteaders, we do tend to see economic trends and are always looking ahead and putting up for a rainy day. Starting a profitable self-sufficient farm stay business on your homestead is no different. 

It's important to be frugal and use our economic downturn to our advantage. 

Vacationers are looking for unique spaces and experiences and what better way than to stay on a self-sustainable farmstay!

Make some new friends:

By this step, we've set our goals, implemented plans and distributed lists, and started our farm stay business on our homestead. Now it's time to take it to the next level. 

The goal here is to see firsthand if we'd like to expand to something bigger or not. And for sure, the look and feel of our farm stays are why guests come back and recommend us to family and friends. 

Because of today's economic downturn similar or worse than 2007-2008, we want to use our land and spare spaces to get our farm stay up and running with even more short-term rentals. 

We took some of the money we made off of our farm stay and visited another short-term vacation rental property.  

We felt that other properties would help us see if we were on the right track. Besides, we collaborated, shhhh.... it could be a write off for our farm stay business. 

Our one unit that we started pays the bills, but another farm stay unit may help us in an economic downturn and even save for retirement. 

I also have to remember; we are creating unique spaces and experiences for paying (prominent) guests. That's really what this business is about! Another WIN.

Hospitality + friends make good farm stays!

Our Online Presence:

By this step, we are up and running and working on having more than one farm stay unit. 

It was time to think about our online presence.  It was a struggle figuring it all out, but we can generate more guests if we set up social media links. This is a work in progress.

We can do it! We are doing it and don't plan on slowing down. We are older than most people trying to start a business online. But we are open minded. 

We decided to start our own website too (Farmstay Family) which will take our Farm Stay, Prominence Homestead of the Ozarks to a whole new level. 

Dean and I are all in. If you find what we are doing interesting and valuable, Great! Follow along on this website, on location (our farm stay) and social media as we continue to learn.  

We are family! WE can all LEARN and HELP each other.

The Golden Goose:

Now, let's bring it home, literately. FarmStay Hack 6 is our golden goose.

It's the only thing between Farmstay Family and gathering that golden egg, is getting organized and we fail miserably here. 

You've heard the expression, get your affairs in order, that couldn't be truer here. I can promise you we don't have all the answers on this, but our tax expert does. 

We hired a Tax Professional to do our taxes. We want every angle we can get to not have to pay in taxes at the end of the year. 

Write offs pay off. That's how the wealthy are rich and don't pay any taxes.

Share Our WEALTH of Knowledge.

You know what people with all our knowledge can do? 

The wealth of knowledge that we have gained, we will keep building on. Our goal is to become outrageously generous with our time, our knowledge, and our money.

There can surely be no greater feeling than leaving a beautiful legacy for our grandchildren who are currently living in London (Update November 2023: Hurrah! They have returned to the States). If this old-world tarry's, think of all the blog post stories they can tell their children and grandchildren.  

This is the best hack of all. It is the most fun of all. Soon (we hope) we can give like no one else! We are working on this hack and can't wait to see it happen!