Ree Drummond Started a Quiet Blog on a Cattle Ranch ...Then Came the Empire

Hi all - sorry we have been dark the past few weeks. I had a nice summer hiatus - and I hope you are having a great summer too!

In other news, tonight’s story is a fantastic example of what I call a “one-person empire.” If that intrigues you (and it should!), I am giving a free SCORE webinar on that very topic this Thursday. Info and link in the Steal This Strategy section below. See you there, I hope!

Picture a ranch so far out that the nearest Target is an hour and a half away.

Picture a woman named Ree, a California girl who married an honest to goodness cattle rancher (she calls him Marlboro Man), typing blog posts most nights to an audience of basically nobody.

Then, one post, Ree almost did not publish.

That post changed everything.

WRITING INTO THE VOID

Ree Drummond started her blog in May of 2006 mostly to keep her mother, back in Tennessee, updated on ranch life. She posted photos of cattle, dinner, her four homeschooled kids. Some nights it felt like writing into an empty room.

She had no strategy, no editorial calendar, and but a handful of readers (most of whom already knew her.)

THE POST SHE ALMOST DIDN’T WRITE

Then Ree did something scarier than anything on the ranch.

She started telling the truth about how she fell for her husband, not the cleaned up version, the real one. A shy city girl who wandered into a small Oklahoma bar, and into the arms of a cowboy in spurs and a starched shirt, and gave up her whole California life for him.

She posted the story in installments, cliffhangers included, one confession at a time.

Too personal, she thought. Too much.

She published it anyway.

THEN STRANGERS STARTED SHOWING UP

Readers could not stop refreshing the page. One person read an installment and told her mother. That mother told three friends. Word spread the way it spreads when something feels real, person to person, not press release to press release.

Ten months after she started, the blog won Best Kept Secret at the 2007 Bloggie Awards. Nobody, least of all Ree, expected what came next.

(Vulnerability: The magic ingredient. She told the truth, and she could not stop the readers from coming.)

THEN THE SUITS STARTED CALLING

Publishers noticed first. HarperCollins signed her, and The Pioneer Woman Cooks hit shelves in 2009.

It sold in the millions.

Then Hollywood came calling. In 2010, Columbia Pictures bought the movie rights to her love story, before it had even cracked a bestseller list, and the studio wanted Reese Witherspoon to play Ree on the big screen.

(The movie itself never got made. But that is not even the crazy part.)

The crazy part: While Hollywood was circling, the Food Network signed her too. Her own daytime show premiered in 2011, the very same year “Black Heels to Tractor Wheels,” her once too personal blog series, hit the New York Times bestseller list.

Then the deals kept stacking up:

• Walmart came next, launching a nationwide Pioneer Woman line of cookware, dinnerware, and home goods in 2015

• A magazine followed

• Eight cookbooks, all bestsellers.

Back home in Pawhuska, Ree opened The Mercantile in 2016, a bakery, a restaurant, a hotel, right on the town’s Main Street, the one that used to sit half boarded up. Locals started calling it “P-Town.”

A shy ranch wife who once wrote to an audience of basically nobody is today worth an estimated $50 million.

Yep, that can happen.

The Takeaway

So often, I hear from readers who think their story is not interesting enough, not polished enough, too ordinary to put out into the world.

Hogwash! (See what I did there? 😀)

Ree Drummond almost believed that too. What actually built her empire was not a marketing plan, it was the one post she was most afraid to publish. The strangers who showed up for that story are the same audience that later brought Hollywood, Food Network, and Walmart calling.

Safe, generic content is not what makes strangers stop scrolling and start showing up.

Steal This Strategy

🎓 Webinar: One Person Empire: How to Build a Six-Figure Business in 2026. I am teaching this live, free, with SCORE this Thursday, the exact roadmap behind breakthroughs like Ree’s.

📖 Book: The Pioneer Woman: Black Heels to Tractor Wheels - A Love Story. The very love story Ree was afraid to publish, later a New York Times bestseller.

🎧 Podcast: Startups For the Rest of Us. Realistic guidance for indie founders building sustainable solo ventures.

📖 Meet: Book a free discovery call with Steve. Let’s talk about creating your own one person empire.

About Steve

Steve Strauss is the best-selling author of The Small Business Bible (and 17 other books), Inc.’s small business columnist, a lawyer (non-practicing), and an entrepreneur. He sold his last venture, TheSelfEmployed.com to Mark Cuban & Zen Business. Need a ghostwriter or a newsletter for your business? Contact Steve!