$100 Startup: How to Start a Garden Business from the Ground Up

In 2015, I read a book that completely changed the direction of my life and it's called the Hundred Dollar Startup. Today I want to talk to you about $100 startup business and tell you why this is such a fantastic way to get a business going if you've got at all an itch to become an entrepreneur and work for yourself. So I read this book way back in 2015. It's called the Hundred Dollar Startup. I think his name is Chris Gillibro. I'm going to read you a little about the book itself. Gillibow, not the. There's no R in there. I apologize Chris, but this gave me hope because when I was starting my garden consulting business back in 2015, I didn't have much more than a hundred dollars. And in my mind I had this concept of what it takes to be an entrepreneur. Have you thought this too where you have to have like this shark tank idea, right? You need some like patent pending concept that no one else in the entire universe has dreamed up. And if you don't have an idea like that, don't even try to be an entrepreneur. And then even if you have an idea like that, if you have something that's, you know, patentable, trademarkable, that's like so different and unique and no one else on the entire planet has dreamed this up yet, you also need a lot of money because you're going to need someone to build the prototype for you. You're going to need a lawyer to patent it for you. You're going to need to order, you know, 30,000 units of this to be ready to start selling it. You're going to have to pay for commercials and marketing and websites and you're going to need like tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of dollars in order to have this business. So I always wanted to be an entrepreneur. I always wanted to be a business owner. It was like a dream of mine. I can remember thinking of it even when I was a child. But it felt like there were so many barriers to starting a business and those were the main two One, I needed some fantastic patentable idea which I didn't have, and two, I needed a ton of money, which I also did not have. So enter this book, the Hundred Dollar Startup. Let me read you the little synopsis of the book and then tell you how it impacted me. So Chris identified 1500 individuals in his book who have built businesses that earn $50,000 or more from a modest investment. And in most cases they started with about a hundred bucks. Then he focused on the 50 most intriguing cases and talks about their studies. He shows that they had no special skills but discovered aspects of their personal passions that could be monetized and were able to restructure their lives in ways that gave them freedom and fulfillment. So he distills this into an easy to use guide in the book and shares valuable lessons from those who've learned how to do this. How to turn their passion, turn something that they love into a gateway to self fulfillment. He says that the hundred dollar startup is all about finding the intersection between your expertise, even if you don't consider it such, that's key and what other people will pay for. So let me repeat that. This is all about finding the intersection between your expertise, even if you don't consider it such and what other people will pay for. You don't need an mba, you don't need a business plan, you don't even need employees. All you need is a product or a service that springs from what you love to do anyway to that people are willing to pay in order to find a way to get paid. So he gives lots of details inside of this and it's really cool. It was just really neat to read all those stories. So here's one of his last key principles. If you're good at one thing, you're probably good at something else. So he says, never teach a man to fish. Sell him the fish instead. And in the battle between planning and action, action wins. So I read this book and this was at a time when I was kind of, I think I was still homeschooling at the time. When I read the book, I was going to the library every week. So I was known as the two laundry baskets lady at the library. Because I would go to the library and I would fill up two laundry baskets full of books and then bring them home. I could check out 50 books a week. And so I would check out 50 books, bring them home, my kids would read through the 50 and then it would pile up the laundry baskets, bring them back to the library and start all over again. So I would get most of the books for them. I was going from like baby books all the way to like Harry Potter for my oldest. And then I would try to grab a couple of books for myself to keep me intrigued too. So I found this book at the library, read it, devoured it, and it was full of so many aha moments for me. But the key was the one I just read to you was that you are probably already really good at something. And even if you're not confident that you are and that you have a skill that people are willing to pay for. This book really talked about, like yourself. You yourself being the commodity of the business, you being the thing that people pay for, and that being such a wonderful way to build a business with very little cash, right? So my previous ideas of a business were that there would be a product, right? There'd be like a little trinket, a little knickknack thingy, right, that you. That you develop and patent and sell. And that's the product. That's the thing that's making the money. And that needs all that. All that great idea, and then it needs all that money to develop it, build it, and ship it and sell it. But this book revealed to me that there was a product sitting right inside of me, right? I didn't need to go to a factory or go overseas to build these little. These little things. At the time, I think the fidget spinners were really big. I didn't need to do that because I had a product right here. And this was based on my own personal experience. The things I had built and experienced and learned and grown through that. Those things. That knowledge that life I'd live was actually enough to become a product in itself. And that was part of my journey to starting a garden consulting business. Because what better way to start something with very little money, right? I started my particular job with $450. So this was a preschool refund check from my daughter's preschool. He talks about starting with as little as 100, and I really could have started with as little as 100. So here's how it worked out. I started with that 450. No loans, no extra money from any outside sources. And the 450 was all I needed. In fact, to open a business bank account, I think you only need maybe $25 or $100. So I put that into my business bank account. I opened the business bank account right from the beginning with the 450. And then when you set up that business bank account, you also get. You can get a business credit card. So I got a business credit card, I got a business debit card, and then I have this checking account, right, that's got the 450 in it. So I am now off to the races. So what I do, the way I. The way my business model worked is I would first charge someone for the consultation. Now the consultation was just me, right? So it was me, my minivan, my notebook, my lettuce, whatever I was bringing them. That was the only cost for the consultation, which I had the time anyway, my daughter was at preschool, my rest of my kids were at school, and I had a van. I had already paid for the van, or me and my husband had paid for the van. So I just got in the van, I had to pay for the gas, and that was about it. So I drive over, I spend the hour, long time with the client, do the consultation, and then come back home. So when they pay me $25, $50, $100, whatever they pay me for that time, the only thing I've really got to pay for is my gas, right? Everything else is I've already covered with my own life experience. And they're really just paying for time with me. So the margin there is amazing. Even if I only charge 25 bucks, I get to keep almost all the 25 bucks for that one hour. So the consultation would start to add to my bank account. So I might take out a little bit of the 450 to pay for my gas, maybe pay for some printouts, something I want to bring to the client. But that's it. That's the only money that's coming out of my bank account. And then I'm putting money in for the consultation. Then once I do the consult, let's say I'm setting up the garden for the client, or I'm buying them products and things that they're going to put into their space. So when I do that, they are paying me for that product. I'm purchasing it over here, and then I'm selling it to them for retail price, maybe a little bit more markup. So here's where the business account and starting it with that $450 is magical, right? I use my business credit card, pay for all the products that the client's gonna need. It's not like $30,000 worth of products, right? It's just a couple hundred dollars. At the beginning, it was even less. So I pay for it with my business credit card. I don't owe on that card for 30 days without any interest, pay for it, Then I go do it for the client. They pay me with a check for all those products, plus my service. I take that check, put it into my bank account, and then I take that money, go and pay the credit card bill for any of those products. And. And then what's left just builds my bank account. Do you see how this happens? And then rinse and repeat, you do it over and over and over again. And so I put that 450 in the bank account to get started. And then I just kept building on top of it. I would do a consult, put the money back in the bank account, order the materials, pull from the credit card and then deliver the materials, get the garden set up for the client. They pay me again, pay off the credit card, and then just keep going client after client after client. And so this hundred dollar startup method wasn't just something I read in a book by Chris. It became like my actual real life that I didn't have to come up with. I remember I had a friend and we were remarking about that person who developed the little things that go into the crocks. You know what I'm talking about? What are those called? I don't know, but my kids were obsessed with those, where they would go in the little crock holes and. And supposedly some mom came up with this idea, patented it, and was making them in her kitchen, whatever. And we were like, oh man, all the good ideas are already taken. We literally said that to each other. And I look back on that and I'm like, Nicole, you had no idea what was sitting just right inside of you. The ideas, all the good ideas are not all taken because you have ideas inside of you that no one else has. And you are, you know, you are a product itself. You are someone that someone else would pay to have time with and to get help from. And so the hundred dollar startup is a real thing. I am a living testimony for it. And I'm so thankful to Chris for writing that book. And I hope this gives you an idea of how you could have your own hundred dollar startup too. You do not have to have some genius, fantastic trinket idea. You don't have to have tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars in order to get it made and shipped and sold. You can start right away as a coach or a consultant. You can let yourself be the product. You make huge margin on your time, and then you can sell products and things that you recommend and sell them at a little bit of a profit margin. And then you can just watch your business bank account grow from $100 to many, many more hundreds of dollars in weeks and months and years to come. It's a business model that's replicable and it's something that almost all of us can do. So if you're listening and you're a gardener, then you might want to do this as a garden consultant and I would love to help you do it every step of the way. We have a certification program inside of Gardenary and we have a Kickstart. This is a week long live event and if you're listening to this at the right time, we might have a kickstart starting right away so you can go to gardenary.com in order to save your seat. It's a free event and it is a way that I introduce you to all the details of the garden industry and show you whether or not this is a good fit for you and you can come learn more about Gardenary. And if you're listening and you're a gardener, or you're not a gardener yet and you want help from someone like me, you can check out the Find a consultant button@gardenary.com and we will match you with a consultant that can help you too. So the $100 startup. What do you think? Have you heard of this concept before? I'm so thankful that entrepreneurship isn't something that's reserved only for the people with really crazy ideas and with tons of money. It really is something all of us can give a try and I hope the fact that I gave it a try encourages you to do it too. Thanks for listening and I will see you next time on the Grow youw Self Podcast. Thanks so much for listening to the Grow youw Self podcast. You can keep listening anywhere. You love getting your podcast delivered on Apple podcasts, on Spotify, iHeartRadio, you name it, we are there for you. And if you want to read the notes and get our free resources to help you grow more, you can go to gardenary.com podcast.