I first discovered Lettie when I heard her on a Rural Revival Podcast episode. Her sweet demeanor and strong passion for change made me think we would be great friends! I loved hearing her story of resilience and her vulnerability about returning home to Johnson City, Kansas. Lettie is not only a rancher, but has discovered other creative opportunities to make an income around the ranch in addition to benefiting her small community. Fast forward to a few months after hearing Lettie on the podcast, I found myself standing in line next to her at the NextGen Under 30 award ceremony in Topeka! The world is small, people! Lettie told me she was driving back to Johnson City that night because she needed to feed cattle in the morning. I was not surprised at all to hear that - this girl gets things done! When I decided to do some guest blogs, I knew she had to be the first!
Lettie McKinney's story is one deeply rooted in Southwest Kansas – to her family's legacy and to the land they've tended for generations. As a fourth generation rancher, Lettie’s ancestors weathered the Dust Bowl and Great Depression in Stanton County, Kansas. Today, Lettie not only runs the farm and ranch operation, but she has found some lucrative side businesses around the ranch as well!
Following her high school graduation, Lettie went to Oklahoma State University and then on to the Ranch Management Program at Texas Christian University. Lettie worked at feedyards in Texas and Kansas before going home. Lettie returned to the ranch after her Father’s battle with a recurring brain tumor called her back to the family ranch. Lettie assumed immense responsibility taking on the operation.
After returning home, Lettie’s ambitions quickly extended beyond the boundaries of typical business ventures. These new avenues of entrepreneurship not only diversified her income streams, but it enriched and inspired the community around her. Lettie’s first venture was MC- Meat Company, a direct producer to consumer meat business, bringing the ranch directly to the table.
Lettie didn’t stop there. She saw the opportunity to transform buildings around her property into something amazing! She repurposed the grain bin on her property into a charming Airbnb. This Airbnb serves as comfortable overnight lodging in a rural area where there aren’t many options. Lettie also regularly hosts Date Nights at the Airbnb, serving as fun events for the community. In addition to the Airbnb, Lettie transformed The Roundtop Event Venue, by taking a literal roundtop storage shed and turning it into a magical event space.
Lettie’s story is a testament to the power of grit, resilience, and seizing opportunities. Lettie saw all the potential all around her family’s ranch. Her ventures serve as an inspiration, reminding all of us that with vision and determination, any circumstance can be transformed into avenues for success and fulfillment.
Lettie, A complaint or concern I hear all the time for law students has been, “Are there Enough clients in rural Kansas?” which I know to be a total misconception, but has it been hard to find customers in rural Kansas? What does your customer base look like and how have you been innovative to work around that?
Yeah. So this is so strange because I do a lot of customer research like insights and digging into that sort of thing. I know what my ideal customer is and I realize most of them aren't in western Kansas.
I'm going to break it into the different entities, if that makes sense between The Round Top, The Bin, and my meat company. My meat customers are a lot different than my Round Top customers. They're all kind of the same, same medium salary range and everything. But like the Round Top is more of somebody who doesn't want to spend $10,000 on a wedding, you know. There are different levels of bride. Some brides don't care about having a rustic, beautiful wedding. Some people just want to do it in the 4H building cheap and get it done. And then some want to have nice, elegant weddings, but don't want to pay an arm and a leg for it. And that's kind of what the Round Top is tailored to.
The Round Top is very much like here it is, this is the rental, this is what you get. Do what you want with it! Like I said, I've had some local people, but most of my customers haven't been from around here. They have all been probably 2 hours away. I'd say an hour and a half to two hours. I don't understand it. I wish I could, but the only thing I can think of is that maybe people who grow up here just want something different for a wedding. That's the only thing I can wrap my brain around as to why they don't want to get married in western Kansas. So it's been interesting, but I do have a lot of local events. We have graduation parties, baby showers, piano recitals, and those kind of things. It’s awesome so it's not just strictly a wedding venue. I don't think I could put myself in that bubble of being a wedding venue just because of the capacity of the community, if that makes sense.
When you look at the statistics, there’s not many people who move back. There's a lot of young people who don't come back to rural communities. When I was at a school board meeting, we were diving into these and I think it was like 5% moved back. So that makes sense as to why I don't have a lot of local weddings because there's not people coming back here.
Photo: Miss Millers Photography
So, what does your marketing look like and how does your innovation work for the grain bin Airbnb?
Yeah, so for the last year I took a social media break! I just needed a break. I had a lot of life changes and there was too much going on at one time for me to try to manage all of them. The Grain Bin, I advertise on social media for a lot because it's cool. I think people should know about it because I think it's a cool space and we're doing a lot of different fun things like Grain Bin Date Nights. This is based on personal experience but I hate when we go somewhere like a big city and we want a nice steak and seafood dinner and it's horrible and you pay $150.00 for it!. So I created the whole Grain Bin Date Nights as a way to go out with your lover to the bin, hang out, have a nice five course meal, stay the night and then go home. You don't have to go to Denver or Wichita or Amarillo and it's only within an hour range.
I've had customers come from all over!. You don't have to go 4 hours or 5 hours. You can get a way better quality steak, a way better dinner and you're in the middle of nowhere. You can rejuvenate and you don't have to deal with the traffic and the hassle and all of the big city. It’s been really fun to see the impact of that. So there's two different markets on the Grain Bin because Date Nights are much more my local crowd. You know, an hour, hour and a half, I call that local. Then I have my other crowd that is people just coming through going to Colorado. I have a lot of people who come from Kansas City or Wichita and they're going to Denver or anywhere on the mountains. That’s a long drive, it's just an 8 hour drive from Kansas City to here. So this is a perfect place for them to stop in! I have those people who primarily look on the Airbnb app and there's nothing but the Grain Bin!
You mentioned that only a few of you from your high school class have moved back. What could you say to those people who are from Johnson City to get them to move back home?
I've tried this and for a lot of them it's the same thing. They don't see there's opportunity in rural living in rural western Kansas, you know, doctors, lawyers, chiropractors. I have a lot of smart people in my class and they all have done amazing things for themselves. It’s hard to convince them there are amazing opportunities out here. There are so many opportunities out here and you just have to be willing to give it a shot. I'm not going to have the success that someone an hour from Wichita is going to have with anything I do because that’s just of the demographics. Somebody an hour east of Wichita or an hour west of Wichita is going to have so much more substantial growth because they have people who are craving this small town feel and to escape the city. They are so tired of being stuck up in a city, just seeing pavement, just seeing people all the time. People are wanting to get to those small town areas.
On that note, within the last couple years I have seen a lot more people from Garden City, Dodge City, Liberal, Lamar come out here and like to rejuvenate. It's happening in these smaller cities too, but not near like the bigger cities. So it’s hard to encourage them, I don't know how to encourage them. There's so much opportunity, but until they want to take that leap of faith, that's just something you have to show them. And that's a very much a big motto I live by is just being a word of encouragement with what I'm doing. Showing people, “Hey, look at all this opportunity. Look what we've done in the last three years, four years. We’ve done a lot!”
That's a big initiative to why I started. I’m like, of course nobody wants to move out here. There's not a coffee shop, there's not a workout place, there's not a good place to go eat. There's not any of that stuff. There's not a good place to hang out. The younger people are very social, they want to go out and get together. If you don't have the infrastructure, it's hard to attract people to come back.
This is from a school board standpoint, because I'm on the school board. When kids connect with a place and they're very tied to it, this happens in middle school, which is super interesting from a psychology standpoint.
It's important for whatever a community is doing, to really attract kids in that middle school age range so that they connect with that place. Because we want people to move back here and we want people!
And what would you say to someone from like Wichita or Kansas City to give them, to encourage them to give rural living a chance? This one's a lot more tough, I think.
I think that it's easier though because they've never experienced it. They can come here with no expectations, no nothing, and for them that’s exciting, they can try something new. When you already have somebody with a perception of a place, it's hard to convince them of something different. I do think convincing a person who lives in the city to come back to rural communities or invest in rural communities is a lot easier because you can tell them about all this opportunity. Even just a simple living, you know, if you're tired of the fast pace and you just want to slow down and take it all in and you can have chickens in your backyard and it's not a big deal. So it's a lot easier to sell to them. But like I said, people are craving that connection with nature right now and just getting back to their roots. So we need people to show them what’s out here.
Yeah, yeah, I agree. I have noticed that there is a huge trend on social media. Everyone's getting chickens, everyone's doing the whole homestead, back to nature thing or they want to be doing that.
It is kind of funny! I think too with a rural community you have to have a work ethic because it's not going to come as easy as it would in the city. Because you have to dig a little bit, you have to dive a little bit, you have to work it a little bit harder.
What is a misconception about rural Kansas and how would you address it?
That there are no opportunities. We're getting ready to walk through a huge transition over the next 10 years because there's a lot of elderly people in my community. I'm not saying if you want to go back home that you have to go into agriculture or anything. But there is a big workforce that comes with agriculture. I just think that the jobs associated with agriculture are something that people don't see. It's all going to transition soon and you're not going to get that opportunity if you're not present somewhere. People don't see the opportunities in rural Kansas because they think there's nothing out there when in reality there are so many great people, so many great opportunities. And if there's not, you can create
something for yourself and you can create your dream
life.
This is amazing, I love it! What is one hopeful thing that you have seen in your experience in rural Kansas since moving home? What's a good thing that you could leave us with?
A good thing I've seen in rural Kansas is that there has been more change in the last six years than I've ever seen. When I first moved home, there was no change at all in my small town, whatsoever. And now there's more people doing things. The chamber's starting to be more active, we got a fitness center and now there's a coffee shop. There are so many little things that are popping up. Since I moved home, people seem more apt to start new businesses. I think some people are just scared to step out and do what they're called to do or plant where they are because there are so many unknowns. They don’t know if it will be successful. They honestly just need a trailblazer, somebody to show them like, “Hey, this is the potential that's here. You just gotta jump up and do it.” It seems like once you get one person moving that brings the momentum and then so many people join the pack. Most importantly, it just takes one person to do something off the wall, something abnormal for rural communities to spark that change.
I had a great time chatting with Lettie! As you could tell from our conversation she is a force to be reckoned with! Lettie is such an inspiration to me. Her success reaffirms my passion for the amazing things that can be done in rural Kansas. Through her innovation and determination, Lettie has transformed her family's ranch into a hub of opportunity, proving that with vision and perseverance, even the most unlikely places can lead to success. Lettie's story serves as a powerful reminder that in every small town, there lies the potential for growth, prosperity, and a vibrant community. As Lettie continues to blaze a trail in rural Kansas, she inspires us all to seize the opportunities that surround us and to never underestimate the power of our own dreams.
To follow Lettie on Instagram, click here.
To visit Lettie's website, click here.
To check out Lettie on the Rural Revival podcast, click here.
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