IAM754- Producer Offers the Widest and Most Diverse Selection of Honey

Jay is a producer and distributor of both Michigan rawl, custom flavored honey as well as specialty mono/poly-floral honey from around the world. His goal is to offer the widest and most diverse selection of pure, unadulterated, farm-produced honey directly to consumers.
Our current product lines are represented by specialty apiaries in
*Michigan
*Italy
*Hawaii
He also runs a Blog dedicated to honey-based gourmand recipes and specialty apiaries around the world.

• CEO Hack: Offloading things I'm not good at through hiring
• CEO Nugget: Persistence is more important than the product
• CEO Defined: Not taking crap from anyone

Website: http://www.heyhoney.biz/

Pinterest: HeyHoney0490
Twitter: @JayJermo

Instagram: jayheyhoney
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HeyHoneyMI/

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Transcription

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[00:00:02.20] – Intro

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

[00:00:30.30] – Gresham Harkless

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast, and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Jay Jermo of Hey, Honey. Jay, it's awesome to have you on the show.

[00:00:39.39] – Jay Jermo

Thanks so much for having me. I appreciate it.

[00:00:42.20] – Gresham Harkless

No problem. Super excited to have you on. And before I jump in, I want to read a little bit more about Jay so you can hear about all the awesome things that he's doing. Jay is a producer and distributor of both Michigan raw custom flavored honey as well as specialty mono and poly floral honey from around the world. His goal is to offer the widest and most diverse selection of pure, unadulterated, farm-produced honey directly to consumers. Their current product lines are represented by specialty apiaries in Michigan, Italy, and Hawaii, and he also runs a blog dedicated to honey-based garment recipes and specialty apiaries around the world. Jay, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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[00:50:45.20] – Jay Jermo

Mhmm. Let's do it.

[00:51:42.20] – Gresham Harkless

So to to kick everything off, I wanted to kinda rewind the clock a little bit here, how you guys started. Could you take us through what I call your CEO story and tell us a little bit about what you got that led you to get started with your business?

[00:01:31.20] – Jay Jermo

Well, I guess I don't want this to go on because I can tend to kinda run out of my mouth. I used to work in advertising and print media. And when the crash of o eight happened, employment was it was on and off for a couple of years, and I eventually ended up getting a job in auctions with a bank in Michigan. So I moved back to Michigan, and I'm from here. And after about a year, I had vacation time. I took a drive around the state and stopped in to see a cousin of mine where we had, spent time as kids up on a farm, a couple hours north of me. This cousin was maybe four family members who raised honeybees and honey for wholesale and, direct to sale.

And he had gotten married, a few years prior, and they had started creating they created a couple of specialty flavors for different food pairings. And we worked out an arrangement where I'd underwrite some hives, and he'd teach me a bit about beekeeping. I'd work on raising my stock. I did that down closer to me as well and then just, helped with bottling and eventual distribution in my local area. And that grew for several years. I parted ways with my family underwrote my hides and set up my hive yards. I started raising my products. And then at a lot of my markets, I had people inquiring about specific flower types, honey from specific flowers from different parts of the world.

So I, you know, I was in LLC at this point, so it becomes a write-off. So I started flying around the world and finding people who have great products, great Honey products, but not, maybe they're not necessarily great at distributing it outside of their locale. So I start building relationships with those beekeepers and with import-export groups, bring it over here, and build the website. And, you just, in short, open up the market to, you know, people who are Honeyfans to different products that they don't have they're not they don't readily have access to. Right. Yeah. That's pretty much the long and short of it. So Nice. Half my time is spent with raising colonies and then the extraction port portions pretty quickly and then or relatively quickly. And then just bottling and taking it to markets really that's all the heavy lifting.

[00:04:03.90] – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. No. I absolutely like that. And and I was gonna ask you, for what I call your secret sauce, and that's what you feel kinda sets you apart and makes you unique. Do you feel like your ability at least, what when I see and I wonder if this is what you consider, that ability to create that experience, to see those connections that you just made, like, being able to understand that it's not just about, I guess, the different taste that is in it, but how it can apply to whatever somebody's do you feel like being able to make those connections is what you feel kinda sets you you or your business apart?

[00:04:33.50] – Jay Jermo

I have this innate fear of, like, talking about myself in a, like, a self-congratulatory tone because I just feel like the universe is, like, they don't want that. Like, I'm so much different, so much better, it's like the universe is gonna go knock it off. I mean, other people do what I do. They probably don't do it the way I do it. Like, when I started doing Honey, that was the first job I had in thirty-eight years that I liked. I'd read about people who'd started companies, and it wasn't a money thing. I mean, it was, but it was more like I couldn't wait to get up and do my thing. And when I go to market, especially in the summer, it's like, you know, COVID's kind of ruining it, but people come out. You get to interact. It's a loose atmosphere.

Like, all my other jobs, I worked in the office. I wore a tie. It was soul-killing. And I like this job because it is not even I wouldn't say it allowed me to be myself. I just did it by default. And then not everybody's cup of of tea. I'll I'm not everybody's particular brand of art, but Mhmm. The people who because I speak very, very frankly. And there's there's a chunk of the population that are honey eaters, and they love that. And they come to me religiously, and those are the customers I want. And I serve them just on a direct basis at my local markets, but I know that they exist outside of Southeast Michigan.

I know they're all over the place, and the purpose of the blog was to kinda figure out how to make this business more, like, not so anchored to where I'm at. I mean, I love all my customers, and I love servicing them, but, like, I don't like, I think the whole, I guess, if I were to what's my vision or what, like, why do it like this, it's to find different avenues to do it more effective. I like, it because we're ultimately, my body's gonna break down. I can't be, like, lugging around forever, But I would like to be able to offer the same kind of service in the most efficient manner possible. Because right now, I'm doing a lot of them, but the whole I'm doing the bulk of the work myself.

[00:06:50.19] – Gresham Harkless

I definitely appreciate that. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit. And I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an app, a book, or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

[00:07:02.89] – Jay Jermo

I'll tell you what's something that will make people more effective, but I suck at implementing it Mhmm. Is figuring out I hate saying it like this, but kinda how to get out of your own way and how to not take on all the responsibility. Like, when you can figure out how to offload things that you're not good at. Like, I'm great at oh, great. I'm pretty good at selling, honey, talking with people, getting them to try things, and making people laugh. That's what it's my thing. The actual production and rearing queens and, like, I'm a right at it, but, like, anything has to do with technical components to the website, that can make a blog entry, but maintenance, that kind of thing, or and you mentioned scaling up a business.

I would either need to have partners or strategic partners, people that I can work with and, you know, there's a balance there where our companies are not necessarily intertwined, or you have to hire appropriately. And that's I mean, every CEO will tell you that's anybody any CEO tells you that hiring is a challenge line. That's just not true. Like, For finding people who are dependable and good at what you need them to do, they don't stay employees for very long. They figure out, and they're like, I'll just do this on my own. I think I kinda sidestepped your question.

[00:08:32.60] – Gresham Harkless

I mean, I feel like you did

[00:08:33.79] – Jay Jermo

I try really hard not to take on activities that are part of the business that I know are gonna slow me down and are not necessarily revenue generating. And I think the website's the best the best portion of that. I went through three designs before I found somebody, and I was like, well, I have very little money for you. I mean, it all goes back into production. But he just happened to be a great guy, and it turned out to be a wonderful friend. I got my guy, John. And he basically built the thing in, like, an hour and a half. And some people may say, well, you know, it kinda looks like it. That's what it needs to do. I retain customers over it, and, I can add content to it. So I think that's the hack is being really selective with who you work with. I'm not I'm not in any hurry I don't have a lot of web designers coming in and be like, hey.

We could do this and that. Like, I'll know it. You'll you'll know. I think here's the hack. Really trusting, like, what's in here, what's in your gut, that's hard for most people. Yeah. And I get irritated easily. And if somebody does if I don't have a complete vibe of genuine behavior, I don't want anything to do with the person I'm talking to. And I cast them off right away. And that keeps my social circle relatively small and the people I work with even smaller, but they're the best relationships I have. Like, all the markets that I work at, all the market masters, the people who run them, they tell me about events all the time. They're my best avenues for they are my conduit to, customers. I don't I don't need advertising because of them. Right. No.

[00:10:18.39] – Gresham Harkless

I love those. I think those are all quality hacks. And so you might have already answered this, but I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget. So this could be like a word of wisdom or a piece of advice. It might be something you would tell yourself if you were to hop into a time machine.

[00:10:32.10] – Jay Jermo

Okay. Actually, I do have this. You've ever seen have you ever seen that, new Michael Keaton movie that came out about Ray Kroc, the founder, on Netflix?

[00:10:40.10] – Gresham Harkless

Yes.

[00:10:41.70] – Jay Jermo

So these are pretty controversial figures for what McDonald is, but he has a couple of tenants for how he got the company going and this isn't rocket science that I'm gonna deliver to anybody here, but it's true. It's persistence is so much more valuable and important than product, deliverable, strategy, or, you know, business plan. Just when you keep hammering at something, it's it's like the law of attrition. You know? If you work on something long enough, you get a bang through. And I was lucky in that, you know, a lot of people like Honey, but I would have fallen by the wayside in all my markets if I didn't show up rain or shine every time.

And they're like, I go. I mean, it's my job now. I gotta be there. But anybody who's thinking about starting something or building something and it's not where you want it to I'm not where I wanna be. Like, I'd love to have, like, birth fees money, but it's, you know, instead of getting there in seventy for ten years the way they did, it's gonna take me a lot longer. But I've seen steady growth since I started this, And the only reason I've seen it is that I'm just pretty I don't wanna pat myself on the back, but I think I'm pretty dependable in terms of I say I'm gonna do something. Yeah. It sounds really easy, but these kids today, you know, they don't

[00:12:16.79] – Gresham Harkless

Get off my line. Get off my line. Yeah. Absolutely. No. You're you're right. It's it's so funny because I don't know if there was something. It wasn't about consistency, but it was right in line. I think lockstep was a grit, how grit is a really big determinant of success. It's not so much that you figure it out on day one, it's that you figure out it on day one thousand a lot of the times, and you're just going and doing it and doing it over and over again. But you have the will and the desire to continue to consistently chop at the tree and get to where you wanna be. So I think that's a phenomenal nugget. And so I wanted to ask you now my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we're hoping to have different quotes, unquote CEOs on the show. So, Jay, what does being a CEO mean to you?

[00:12:57.89] – Jay Jermo

I think it's kinda like that becomes a grandiose title that people like, I don't wear a three-piece suit. I don't have a super nice office with a glass I don't have any of that stuff. To me, it just means, like, I can use profanity a lot, so I'm not gonna try not to.

[00:13:16.50] – Gresham Harkless

I don't take crap off of anybody. And that's, to me, that's the best part. Jay, truly appreciate that. Appreciate your time even more. What I wanted to do was pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional you can let our readers and listeners know, and, of course, how best they can get a hold of you and find out about all the awesome things that you're doing.

[00:13:33.39] – Jay Jermo

Wow. I don't really have any book recommendations but welcome new customers. If you wanna try something, you can visit me at, w w w dot hey honey dot b I z, and that's h e y honey. There's a there's another company company of a similar name, but they're a cosmetics company that's not me. Mhmm. On Instagram at jay honey, j a y, hey honey. I have some other ones, but I don't use them. Those are probably the best ones. And, yeah, please please, folks out there, keep cooking, keep eating, you know, that blood butters our bread.

[00:14:09.89] – Gresham Harkless

Absolutely. And, we would definitely have the links and information in the show notes. So you may not have a book recommendation, but going to your blog is one of them.

[00:14:17.20] – Jay Jermo

I do have a recommendation. Go for it. I do have a I take that back. I have another business, and this isn't to promote the business, but it's kind of to underscore what we talked about persistence. I have a little hot dog cart through Last Stand, and the reason I got into that is I read this book, Hot Dogs Saved My Life. And it was just about starting a little shop on your own and, like, what the mechanics of building, like, a hot dog cart look like. But kind of the undercurrent within that book is this must apply to anything, any venture you start. Again, going back to what we talked about earlier, persistence is you gotta keep plugging away because the first place you plant your flag may not be a place that, you know

[00:15:02.79] – Gresham Harkless

Ends up.

[00:15:03.29] – Jay Jermo

Brings you all the riches. You gotta you gotta keep hunting and pecking and looking around for opportunities. So that's my recommendation.

[00:15:12.89] – Gresham Harkless

Okay. No. I appreciate that and definitely like that recommendation. So we will have that in the show notes as well as with everything else. So, Jay, truly appreciate you again, my friend, and I hope you have a great rest.

[00:15:23.50] – Outro

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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