Cherilyn Yazzie, Farmer & Owner of Coffee Pot Farms

Meet Cherilyn Yazzie, a Navajo woman and farmer who started Coffee Pot Farms to address food access issues. We discuss her fear of leaving her stable job, the layers of advocacy needed in her business, and what routines and rituals keep her sane.
cherilyn yazzie

Published on  February 26, 2021

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Listen to this episode:

Listen and subscribe via: Apple Podcasts | Spotify


I have a podcast…. maybe?!

I listen to podcasts alllll the time but I never seriously thought about putting one together myself.

Frankly, it just felt like “another thing” I needed to do in my content efforts, and just thinking about it felt overwhelming!

But then, I figured – hey, I LOVE listening to podcasts… why can’t I do something simple to test out the idea and see if my audience likes it? After all, I teach entrepreneurs to be curious and run little experiments in their business, so it’s time I practice what I preach.

So, let me introduce you to the Create Your Purpose® Conversations!

My vision is to share inspiring women with you – the kind of women who are doing the work to build their businesses and lives with purpose and on purpose.

It was a no-brainer to begin with Cherilyn Yazzie, owner and founder of Coffee Pot Farms. She is a Navajo woman who founded her farm in Dilkon, Arizona to provide fresh food to her community, something that is hard to come by because of the remoteness of the reservation.

Cherilyn is also a member of my Create Your Purpose Collective so I’ve been privy to her journey behind-the-scenes to build her business and man am I inspired!

Will this be a real, consistent podcast updated consistently? No idea! But, I’d love to know if you’re interested in that (comment below!).

Oh, and this episode was lovingly recorded from my bathtub. The pandemic work-from-home situation ain’t easy! So please know that this episode is FAR from perfect (and as a recovering perfectionist, this is hard for me to admit) and I hope to continue to get better over time with the technical aspects of it all.

In this episode, we talked about:

  • 5:50 ~ How she began Coffee Pot Farms and why
  • 10:00 ~ Her fear of leaving her full-time job to begin a farm
  • 14:52 ~ Why advocacy and activism is integral to her business
  • 20:52 ~ The routines + rituals that keep her sane
  • 26:07 ~ The ways Cherilyn and her husband hold each other accountable
  • 28:30 ~ The importance of social media for her business during the pandemic
  • 31:10 ~ Rapid-fire question round!

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3 Comments

  1. Cherilyn Yazzie on November 18, 2021 at 7:40 am

    Hi Quinn, thanks for giving our farm a shout out. It’s much appreciated. Check out Quinn’s Create Your Purpose Collective. It helped me really refine the purpose for our business and begin to create a system that keeps us organized as much as possible. When you’re first starting out there’s a million tasks to do but you do them one task at a time.
    Thanks for taking a listen to the podcast. I appreciate it.
    Sincerely, Cherilyn Yazzie

  2. Marley on August 11, 2022 at 3:49 pm

    I had a very dear friend that lived in pinon on the Navajo Nation and wanted to start something like this. She was tragically killed by a horse. I still have friends that live there and all they have for food is bashas. Every chapter house should implement this so that all the families have access to health food. I have spoken with bashas many times about getting better quality food and they just dismiss it as it’s never gonna happen. What kind of an attitude is this? Please Cherilyn get this to all chapter houses it would create jobs and show bashas that they should be ashamed for not providing healthy food at their stores.

  3. Lisa Lewis Byjoe on December 12, 2023 at 12:40 pm

    Great job. Keep inspiring us. It’s great to hear and read your article and podcast.

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