In this wonderful interview you’ll meet Mark and Renee Ebert, owners of Ebert’s Greenhouse Village (www.ebertsgreenhouse.com) in Ixonia, Wisconsin. Ebert’s is now a “greenhouse experience,” with millions of dollars in gross income, but it didn’t start that way. Listen for the humble origins with Mark’s father, Mark’s “buy in,” and the arrival of Renee Baganz into Mark’s life and the ways they have grown as a couple and as a business. This is a beautiful and inspiring story of truly Christian entrepreneurship.
[00:00:00] Well, for myself personally, I feel so blessed because, I mean, who gets to work with their
[00:00:05] husband, their daughter now, their son-in-law, you know, it's family and all these awesome
[00:00:13] people that are like our friends, like Mark said, like family. But then I feel really blessed
[00:00:20] because who would think that you could use a teaching degree from Concordia at the Garden Center? East Pleasant Street in Okanwok, Wisconsin. Welcome to Christ in All Things. I am Pastor Lance O'Donnell. I'm Pastor Jason Schochman. You won't hear much from me in this episode because, well, we're experiencing some technical
[00:01:43] difficulties and my mic channel just is being naughty. Yes. Has it always been Ebert's greenhouse village? No. My dad, when he started, basically our business started from an idea of just, he started a vegetable garden, and he enjoyed the, he did it part-time. He had another college at the time, so they had a really good marketing program. So I went there and graduated in 1989, and I was searching and could not find the job I really was looking for, and my dad approached me at that time and asked if, would you want to buy my end of the greenhouse
[00:04:22] business, not the produce, but the greenhouse? That is fair. I just had to jump in. I picked my jaw up off the floor. That is quite an investment. Yes. So you went in for a thousand bucks and you had ended you pay it off sooner or was it a did you go in at a thousand a year? You know what? I don't remember but I did pay it off. But it took more time when we met probably to pay it off.
[00:05:42] Yes.
[00:05:43] And then that was the first year when you know and two sisters. My brother Ron, my partner died in 2015. Right. And I imagine we're gonna come back to that. Yes. In a little while. Yeah. So yeah, we just wanted to do something different. And we thought we'd call it throw in village, but we wanted to keep greenhouse
[00:07:00] because we wanted people to know that we were selling plants,
[00:07:04] but it was a different atmosphere.
[00:08:05] her and I was thinking I was gonna ask her to get married. And anyway, I thought I gotta find something.
[00:08:12] Yeah.
[00:08:13] You met Renee and you knew immediately this is probably.
[00:08:18] I felt pretty good about it.
[00:08:20] Yeah.
[00:08:21] I can see that.
[00:08:23] And then anyway, I called them, and I only knew them a couple months. And I just said, I have this situation. I got a great job at UPS. Excellent job benefits set for life. Or I got a,
[00:09:42] I got something in the backyard, a few,
[00:10:42] She's making serious money as a Lutheran school teacher. You guys were in.
[00:10:43] Right.
[00:10:44] So.
[00:10:46] Yeah, I know that I do remember telling you, I said, why don't you give him a call?
[00:10:50] You know, because I know through his years of ministry and all the advice he's just,
[00:10:57] you know, that wise old owl, he can, he can kind of, he can listen and he can feel with his heart.
[00:11:03] So Renee Renee's dad, Mark Baganz votes of confidence there. Mr. Ebert. Yes. I mean, you just said a woman to sell you. I don't care what he does, but I just trust him. Absolutely. So what was, I mean, now we're now we're doing marriage stuff. But this is the foundation of a business. What was it about him that made you say,
[00:12:22] this is going to go? Well, so from the very I've told you that. He's got a big, he's got a big smile on his face. You can't see it on the radio holder. Oh, stop. So, you know, you, you got this, you got this lump in your throat.
[00:13:44] I mean, you had, you met your girl.
[00:14:49] So doing something on my own, even though it didn't look like a lot at the time, it gave me that freedom to do. So what do I want to do?
[00:14:53] So, well, let's ask our questions.
[00:14:56] One of the things we ask in this series, in relationship to our other personal interviews that we do at Christ and all things, our farm because he was short on money in the 60s or 1959 early 60s. And then in the early set like 1970 I was I was a kid when he was ready to sell the entire farm. He wanted to move the Okanwalk and he had a job at Fibre-SN and it fell through because nobody wanted
[00:16:21] to buy the farm. And I think it many other twists and turns throughout the business set. Are you still at that now? You said it's 120 acres. Is that what you are today? No. So that's another story out. So my dad sold 80 acres.
[00:17:41] So we were down to 40 acres.
[00:17:43] And it was like that until it was a couple of years to me, he goes, I sold land that I wish I would have had right now. He said, do it. So we bought the land and that's where we live now right across the street. And how many acres is that? That is about 19 acres. So right now, altogether we have 59 acres where the business and where we live. And then we also rent 20 acres for pumpkins.
[00:19:01] Gotcha.
[00:19:02] So from the neighbor. customers come. I don't believe it's really possible unless you have God. There's a lot of businesses out there but are they truly successful? They for us that have just done so much. And, you know, the one thing I tell people, I'm not the most intelligent person in the world, but I'm smart
[00:21:40] enough to know that you need good people to work with you, because obviously when I saw you doing So why did you do that? Well, maybe that's the wrong question. What would the right question be? Well, it seemed like that there was a lot of time that our schedule was opposite, like an eye. And your sister, so my sister-in-law at that time had been doing some of the field trips,
[00:23:00] with the kids coming out learning about the plants,
[00:23:03] and so on and so forth, because she had been teaching,
[00:23:06] but then she stepped really blessed because who would think that you could use a teaching degree you know from Concordia at a garden center but every day I have been blessed with the opportunity to do that because right now we're in the midst of all our fall field trips and I get to be the storyteller every day.
[00:24:20] So what happens at the fall field trips? So all the kids come out they we have a story theater
[00:25:23] sometimes kids from Brookfield, Milwaukee, buses that come in, Cusus Fird, today,
[00:25:26] Fort Atkinson, St. Paul's was there.
[00:25:28] So you guys give school kids who are,
[00:25:33] and most of us are distanced from what we eat
[00:25:38] and from plant life, you know, that type of,
[00:25:41] you give them in a, basically kind of a farm experience.
[00:25:44] Correct, correct.
[00:25:45] I mean, I remember back when my brother-in-law, to fall because there's so many, you know, so many gardeners out there, they're coming and visiting to get their plants. So it does get very busy. But what they do is they come out and we have a walking part of the tour where they get a tour of the village and they get to learn the difference between annuals, perennials, herbs, you know, we do so they can go in the herb house and they can touch and smell. We talk about how to cook with
[00:27:03] them, what to do. Then we go have a step in and maybe enhance something that was already happening and be able to be a more day to day partner with your husband.
[00:28:21] Right, and it did grow a lot.
[00:28:23] I mean, back then the field trips weren't,
[00:28:25] we didn't have as many and the fall
[00:28:27] was just starting to progress. For show notes and other information about Christ in all things, visit Christinallthings.org. Comments may be emailed to comments at Christinallthings.org.
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