5 Ways to Make Money as a Gardener

Welcome to the Grow youw Self podcast. Surprising stories about the food we eat and inspiring conversations about what it really takes to live the whole and happy life we're all craving. My name's Nicole John C. Burke, and I'm the owner of Rooted Garden and Gardenary Incorporated and author of the upcoming book Kitchen Garden Revival. Is it obvious I'm kind of obsessed with the kitchen garden.

Each week here on the Grow youw.

Self podcast, you're going to be shocked at the things you'll learn about foods you eat every single day. And you'll feel encouraged to take little steps in your own busy schedule to create a more whole and happy life for yourself. So turn up the volume and let's take a walk, go on a drive, or just hang out in the kitchen garden together. Every time you listen, I promise you'll learn something that will help you grow yourself in a new and exciting way. Sound good? I think so. Now let's dig in.

By the way, you've got my dream job. These were the words a kind woman shared with me a few years ago as I was leaving a meeting. I had been there to help this school design a kitchen garden for their community. And honestly, I was a little stressed out, little worn out. And her words took me by surprise, especially because I had someone else's dream job. I had my own dream job that I developed years ago. In fact, it was 10 years ago. I was in in Ivy Nursery in Charlottesville, Virginia. I was with my mom and we had two of my young children with us. And I was watching this woman in the nursery. She was watering the orchids. I believe she was in the greenhouse. She had this gorgeous sun hat on. She was just like Zenning with her plants. I remember walking through kind of stressed out as a mom. I was still doing contract work back at home on my computer every day. Finances were a little tight as my husband was in grad school and watching this woman thinking, wow, she's got my dream job. I was thinking, how fun would that be to be able to play with plants and tend plants and actually get paid to do it? Well, little did I know that little dream that I put into my heart 10 years ago would turn into this. Two companies centered completely around the garden and women like this woman at this event looking at me in the eye and telling me I had her dream job. Well, I do think that garden coaching is the dream job. And I'm on a mission to train gardeners all over the world to grow their own profitable garden coach business. And that's what this podcast episode is all about. Five ways that you can make money as a gardener. It's going to be super exciting, super inspiring, and I hope that it will spark a dream in your own heart to start growing your own garden coach profession. This episode is brought to you by my Garden Coach Challenge. It is coming up, guys. It starts on March 1st. And in this free five day challenge, I'm going to be leading hundreds of you, maybe thousands of you, to learn how to create your first garden coach project product. It's going to be super fun. Free. There's already so many people that have signed up and you can learn more about it@gardenary.com challenge. So if you're not ready to sign up yet, I know you will be after this episode. All right, let's dig in and learn five ways that you can have a dream job and make money as a gardener.

Okay.

Welcome back to the Grow youw Self podcast. I am so thrilled that you're here. This has been such a fun new project and challenge for me in 2020 to show up weekly with my voice and and give you some inspiration in terms of gardening and food and living the whole and healthy life that we are all CR Today. I'm going to talk about something a little different here on the podcast. I want to talk about the profession of garden coaching. I'm doing this mostly because my Garden Coach Challenge is happening the beginning of March. And so I want to be sure that I put these ideas in your ears and your heart in case you're one of those people who has a dream of one day making a living as a garden professional. In this lesson, we are going to talk all about five ways that you could actually make money as a gardener without having like a garden store or selling something from your garden. So I know this is going to inspire you and hopefully give you tons of ideas on ways that you could make money as a gardener. Or maybe if you're just a beginner gardener, maybe you have a friend who's a gardener who you could point to and say, hey, you need to come listen to this and start your own garden coach business. All right, so a quick little story from me. So I hinted at this. I had a dream, I guess that started about 10 years ago after attending going to a nursery to buy plants for my little bitty yard in Charlottesville, Virginia. We had a townhome and when I had two young kids, my mom and I worked on landscaping the front yard that was about all of 10 square feet together. And shopping at the Nursery. I noticed these women that were just like, in their element playing with plants, and I was super duper jealous. So that sparked an interest in gardening and possibly doing it as a profession. I had no idea how that would materialize in the years to come. But now I do have a picture, and I've grown my own business over the last five years. So in 2015, the fall of 2015, I founded Rooted Garden. So that was my kitchen garden company, or is my kitchen garden company based in Houston, Texas. And when I first started that company, I called it Rooted Garden Goods. I thought I'd be selling things from my garden, literally. I was thinking I was gonna sell bags of lettuce, cause I was growing so much at the time. But I had a friend recommend to me. She said, you know, Nicole, I don't wanna buy stuff from your garden nearly as much as I want to learn how to garden the way you do. And that literally lit up a light bulb in my brain. And I realized, oh, my gosh, that sounds so much more fun than washing lettuce. I wanna teach people. I wanna be and a coach. So I literally went back to the county clerk guys, not even kidding, bought back the title Rooted Garden Goods, and then resubmitted a new company called Rooted Garden. So I began to advertise my company as a consulting company, as a garden coach company, and the rest is history. In this episode, what I wanna do is outline for you five different models that you could use to take your garden experience and knowled and turn it into literally a profitable profession. So in that first year, my company really did all these different levels. And I'll give you an explanation of that as we dive in now in 2017, what happened over the first two years of my company's growth? I was hanging out on Instagram quite a lot, posting the progress. And I started getting tons of inquiries and questions from gardeners like yourself, who would say, oh, my gosh, you have my dream job and how did you get started? I wish you could help me do it too, where I live. And so a light bulb again went off. And I realized, oh, my goodness, I'm having an experience. And now I have knowledge that I could share with other people like me around the country, around the world, who want to set up their own garden coach business too. So I launched the Kitchen Garden Coach Society late 2017. And over the last two years, I've trained over 135 gardeners to start their own garden coach business all over the place, mostly in North America. And even a Couple in, like, New Zealand, they're. The Garden Coach Society 2.0 is coming this spring, and it's in celebration of that that we're doing this garden coach challenge. So I can't wait for you to find out more about it. But let's dive into these five different ways that you could make money as a gardener without, like, starting a garden store or trying to be a YouTube star or something. So that I guess you could be. You could monetize your garden knowledge being a YouTube star, but I haven't learned how to do that yet. All right. The first level is simply being a coach. So I often like to compare this to the fitness industry, right? Where there's personal fitness trainers, there's personal trainers, there's gym coaches, there's classes that are taught by coaches. So maybe that will help you kind of get your mind around what this looks like. So a garden coach is someone not who knows every single thing about the entire garden. I mean, is that even possible? A garden coach is someone who's had enough knowledge and experience that they can convey that in a systematized way to a student or a beginner who's ready to learn. Now, so many times when I talk to people, they'll say, oh, my gosh, I would love to grow a garden coach business like yours, but I just don't have enough experience yet. Like, I really need to, you know, get more. I have more time, maybe a few more years in the garden. And that may be the case. But I do want to share with you a line I talk about so often, and that is that there's always a freshman class. So the idea here, you know, is looking back at high school and how. How the freshman class comes in and say, you're a freshman first. That's when you're doing everything for the first time, and then you become a sophomore. So you're not at senior level yet. You haven't mastered every single aspect of high school, but you have figured out how to be a freshman. And actually, the best people to help the next year's freshmen are not the seniors. It's the sophomores, because the seniors are so far removed from that freshman year that they're just kind of laughing at the freshman. They can't even remember what that was like. But the sophomores, I mean, those memories are fresh. They know what that is like to go through all those challenges, and so they can help the freshmen through it the best. Well, I like to think of that way as a coach, too. So as coaches, basically, all we need to be is sophomores. We need to be a couple steps ahead of our students. And that's really what makes us such a great teacher, is someone who can empathize and sympathize and understand where our students are. I don't know about you, but for me, in class, college, the very worst professors I ever had were the ones who were super duper educated and certified and PhD to the third degree. I just literally couldn't understand anything they said in class. I had a multivariable calculus teacher that literally I don't even know what language he was speaking. And oftentimes I think we can fool ourselves into thinking that we need to be that level of certification to be a good coach and teacher when the opposite is true. We need to be as close to the experience of our students as possible. And that's what will make us be such a great coach. So a coach, what they do is they take their experience and their knowledge and they turn it into a system that they can pass along to students. This is super important. So you take what you've learned and then you make it digestible. You make it into a system that student can follow along with, who can they can feel accomplished with, and they can kind of mark off and congratulate themselves with. So this can be done in almost any area of the garden. My first space that I did this in was with salad gardening. So I broke it into a few steps, and then I taught that step by step to my students. You'll learn how to do this actually with me in the garden coach challenge. We're gonna do this together as a group. So this is what a coach does. They take their experience, they put it a system, and then they develop a means to distribute this. So you can do this one on one. You can do this with a large group. You can do this in so many different ways, just like a fitness coach would, right? So a fitness coach who's developed a particular practice, like certain stretches or a certain way to, say, build biceps or something, right. They have a variety of ways that they can convey that system to their students. And you can do the absolutely same thing as a garden coach. Now, the cool thing about this first level of being a garden coach is that almost anyone can do it, and you can do it with very little setup required, because the main thing you're selling is your knowledge. So literally, when I first got started, salad gardening was really the thing I taught most clearly. So one of my very first things I did is I advertised a salad garden workshop at my House. And the package included getting to harvest your own salad from my garden and then learn my system for salad gardening. That was it. I got to use my own experiences, my own space, and just invite my neighbors and friends to come along and learn from me. And I even charged for the event. So I got to make money off of my own experience and knowledge. Now, did I make a ton of money in that first workshop? No, I did not. But it gave me confidence, right? I love to tell the story that my first workshop on solid gardening, I don't know, I think I had five people respond, and the tickets were $30 a piece. And then two years later, I did the same workshop. Like, literally the exact same workshop, same system, everything. We did it for a country club in Houston, and I think the tickets were $100 or $150. I can't remember what they charged, but it sold out the very first day. They advertised it to, like, 100 people, or maybe I'm exaggerating. It was like 50 to 100 people. So pretty fun to see how your business can grow. So just because very few people sign up at the beginning does not mean they will not eventually. The ticket is to start coaching and to get your students results. So just for those three or four or five people that showed up, I mean, I taught them the exact same thing. So as long as the system works and you know your stuff, then you will eventually get more and more students who want to be coached by you. So that's the first way to make money as a gardener is to coach. Like, to take your knowledge, put it into a system, and then decide how you'll distribute it, how you'll get this to people that want to learn from you. The second level of money as a gardener is to become a consultant. So in this situation, you're still going to be a garden coach. I'd like to say for all five of these tiers, these are really levels that build on one another. And at the heart of all of them is being a coach, being a teacher and a leader and a guide. And then we add on new products and new levels that we can sell and make money from. But at the heart and core of it is really being a coach, being a person who's helping someone transform from, say, a nervous or beginner gardener to a very confident one. So for the second level as a consultant, you're still creating that system that you've developed based on your garden experience, but now you're doing something a little bit further, and you're actually recommending products that you will sell to them. So this takes your business to another level. So, for instance, going back to my business, when I first got started, I would do consulting, I would do coaching. I'd have clients say, okay, well, I'm ready. Can I set up a salad garden? So what I began to do is I would point them to the right products, right? So I would sell them, say, a raised bed, or I would sell them soil, or I would sell them seeds. And on all those products, I would be recommending them and then making a little bit of profit on each and every one of those product sales. This is such a simpler way to begin to make a profit as a gardener rather than having a storefront. So you don't have all the inventory and all the overhead of a store. You get to really base your purchases and the products that you're selling on the one on one. And maybe even the group coaching that you're doing. This can as a surprise to me, but happened pretty quickly. So probably within the first few months, this is how I really got my business going, is I would do a consultant service and then recommend products to them and then make a little bit of money on each of the things that I sold to them. With a business with the certification and your id, you get to order products at a little bit of a discount. So maybe not always at 50% wholesale price, but at least a little bit of a discount that you can. Then you're still selling your product products for retail price to your clients, but they're getting such a better deal because they're actually getting help. I like to say that the garden industry is super messed up right now because we're so product focused. So when you head to a store, what you're seeing is product, product, product, right? But you rarely see people. You rarely have someone help you through and understand which product's best for you and how to use it. This is why so many people think they don't have green thumbs, because they buy products, get home, it dies, or it doesn't work. Then they think it's all their fault, when really it was just a wrong product match. So by being a consultant, you're really offering your clients such a better experience because you're only recommending products that you know are going to work based on the system you've developed. You can pretty much guarantee them this is going to be a great product for them, and then you're going to be coaching them through the whole process. So rather than us like working, you know, shopping at a Nursery or a hardware store, buying these things and never, ever having help with them, coaching them through the whole process. So with my clients, I would recommend a bed, like a particular raised bed. I'd recommend the soil and the seeds and then sell all those to them. And then I was their support structure as they set up their garden so they could do it all with confidence, not feeling like, you know, they were going to be lost, or once they got things set up, they were on their own. So it's such a better way to learn how to garden, to set up a garden in the first place, to work with a consultant. So that's the second level that you can use to make money as a garden coach, as a gardener. So you coach them, you use your system, and then you also sell them products that you particularly recommend. I always have only sold products that I have used myself or that I've proven with other clients that work. So this makes me 100% confident in what I'm selling. This is so different than someone, say, being sponsored by a product on Instagram or YouTube. Right? This is not like that at all. This is super duper practical, and I think such a better way to serve people in the garden industry than just a storefront. All right. The third way that you can make money as a gardener is being a creator. So once again, the coaching is still at the heart of this particular product. But beyond just giving them your system and your direction and beyond just selling products is you're actually creating a plan for them. So this can vary widely from creating a planting plan in terms of, like, what to plant, when and where to put it in their garden, all the way to actually designing. Designing the garden space for them. Now, depending on where you live, you want to make sure that you always know the legalities around this. So some states have requirements in terms of who can design landscape spaces and garden spaces. But in general, what I've found, especially if you're working in the area of kitchen gardens, there aren't nearly as many ramifications and legal restrictions on things like just doing a simple kitchen garden versus, like, heavy irrigation or an entire landscape. But even something as simple as creating a planting plan for your clients, this is a great way to serve people and to really take it to the next level. So this is what I like to call the creator. Are you seeing here that every single one of these starts with a C? Yeah, I did that for you. So with the creator, you're still coaching, you're still using a system, and then obviously you're still going to be able to work at the consultant level, where you're selling them products, but this time, you're literally telling them where every single thing goes. So as I first started my business, you know, I would go in, work with a client, help them know how to set up their garden, maybe even look through the spaces of where we'd want to put it, and then, you know, work as the consultant, selling them the raised bed, et cetera. Then soon my company morphed to where the clients were really relying on me more to even help with the design of it. So deciding how many beds there would be, how we would lay them out, what all we would include with them, and then even a planting plan for each and every season. So this really brought my services to another level with being the creator, to the point now my company rooted garden. What we do with pretty much every single consult that we offer, we also include a design with that. So when we go and meet with the client, part of that package is delivering a complete kitchen garden design for them. So this is the creator level. The fourth level is being a contractor. So again, there may be legal ramifications, depending on where you live and where you're working, as to who and how you can be a contractor. I know some states, maybe particularly California, have lots of legal ramifications around this, but basically what you do in this case is you don't just coach them. You don't just create a system. You don't just sell them particular products and create a design for them, but you even contract out the labor. So in Houston, I was so fortunate to have so many great clients as I began. And a lot of them almost immediately would say, oh, I love this design. I love this idea. But quickly I realized I had more than just DIY clients. I had clients who wanted us to do the work for them. Well, I did at the beginning. I'll tell you more about this in a second. I tried to do a lot of that work myself, but soon ended up with projects that were way beyond the scope of what I could handle. So what I started doing is contracting. So I would find people who had specialties in the particular areas that would be included with the garden work, and then I would contract out to make sure that they did a great job. So I would contract to a carpenter to build a raised bed for me. I'd contract to an irrigationist to put the irrigation into the garden. I would contract out to, say, a labor company to shovel the soil or to move the gravel pieces like that. This is what we call a turnkey installation. And basically what I became in that situation was a manager, right? So not only was I guaranteeing my client that they'd get to use my system, which would definitely work. Not only was I making sure that they were getting the very best products for the system that they were incorporating into their garden. And not only were we designing it, but then we were also overseeing the full installation of it, making sure that everybody shows up on time, that it gets done to the highest quality, and we really just take away the stress and all the frustrations that go into that hard part of setting up a garden. So in this case, what I love about it is we do the hard work for a client, and then they get to do the fun work. So this is the case for so many parts of our lives, right? Where the setup and the getting going is the hardest part. And if we could just get over that hump, then we could really grow into and become the thing we want to do. I don't know. To me, this is the case for everything, right? Like, it's vacation, right? It's the getting to vacation that's the hardest part. It's booking the travel and figuring out where to go and all that stuff. But then once you're on vacation, you know, it's so worth it. So I like to say we're kind of like that. We're like the travel agents, right? For the garden, we're doing all that hard, tough work for the client so that they can go out and just really focus on the aspects of actually gardening, of tending and planting and enjoying the plants that are growing in their space. So that's what a contractor does. So like I said, that's kind of bringing it to another level. But obviously, with each of these tiers and levels, there's more opportunity to increase your revenue and then also to increase the level of service you're providing. So I like to say that price is really not a big deal as long as you're giving way more value than your client is paying for. With each of these, obviously, the price of the service goes up, but also the value goes up big time. Like, you're taking away all the stress and frustrations and decision making for your client, and you're just letting them go on vacation to their garden. Okay. And the final level I want to talk about is being the constructor. I don't even know if that's a word, but basically, you're the one doing all the work. Now, when I first got started, I literally did all These things. I remember it was the first fall, literally, I think it was one of my first client. She ordered a garden that was one and a half feet wide by 12ft long. And this was a custom size. Like, there's no way I could order this from any company. It was just way too long. So I literally went and bought the boards from the hardware store. Long story, but I busted the windshield in my van trying to fit these 12 foot boards into my van. Shh. Don't tell Jason. No, actually, I kept the garage closed so my husband wouldn't see and then went and got the windshield fixed the next day. I made zero dollars on that project. But I learned a lot of good lessons. I did the construction totally for myself, for that bed. Like, I put the bed together in my garage, drove it over to the client, put the last few pieces together. I hauled all the soil, I put in all the plants. I did everything. So in that case, I was the constructor. Now, I learned very quickly that that was not the best use of my time and that there were other people in the world who could do those jobs much better than who would not bust their windshield open in the process. I quickly decided that being the constructor was not something I wanted to do. But I could totally have a business where I own or I hire employees to do that in house. So in our Garden Coach Society, we have a good number of employees who either can do all the construction work themselves or say in their family they can. Maybe they have a spouse that likes to do that or a sibling, or they just hire that position out inside their company. So they do everything inside their company rather than contracting processes out. Both of those are a great possibility or even a mix. So say you might want, maybe you're the carpenter, but you might hire out, say, stonework or something like that, depending on the project that your client asks for. These are five ways that you can make money as a gardener. Five different levels. And as you can see, they all build on one another. The first level is being a coach, and that is at the heart of all five of these. The main thing I talk about inside the Garden Coach Society is we are all about transformation, not information. And we're focused on people, not products. So the heart of our industry, the heart of making money as a gardener, is putting people first. I love that about this business. And it's literally what keeps me going. Listen, it is a dream job, but it's not always a dream. Sometimes it feels more like a nightmare. No, seriously, it doesn't mean just Because I'm getting to go after my passion. It doesn't mean that it's easy, and it doesn't mean that there aren't lots and lots of challenges, because there absolutely are. There's as many good days as there are bad days. But what keeps me going is the transformation, watching people change from being intimidated or beginner gardeners to suddenly being the ones who are teaching others. I like to say one of my favorite stories is when I'll bring, say, a new client to an established client's garden to show them garden and let them see how it turned out and give them a vision of what's possible. And my favorite, favorite thing is when a client who I've trained or coached and consulted with in years past is explaining and describing and telling the new client all about their garden. It's so fun to watch. This person that used to be intimidated and overwhelmed is literally now the garden coach. Like, they're explaining how long carrots take and what grows up the trellis and what they like and dislike about the whole process and their favorite season and what they love to make in the kitchen with their garden. It's just the best. So we're all about transformation. We're all about people rather than products. So that's at the heart of all five of these levels. So there's a garden coach remembering that there's always a freshman class. There's always people that can learn from you and your particular experience in the garden. You just have to take your experience and turn it in into a system that your client can follow, understand, and feel like they graduate through. Then the next level is being a consultant. This is where you don't just coach, but you actually connect your clients to products that they can purchase, that they can use and that they can trust. This flips the script and makes the focus be on them rather than the products and gives them confidence as they buy those products that they'll have your help as they begin to use them. The next level is being a creator, where you don't just connect them to products, but you actually line up and design how they'll set those up in their own space. This is a super fun. It's kind of like playing Barbie, but with gardens. The next level is being a contractor, where you don't just design and set up a garden, but you actually make sure that it all comes together and you take away a lot of the headache and challenge that your client would face as they start to set up their garden. So this is like being the travel agent that gets your client to the destination of gardening with ease. And so they get to enjoy the best parts of it and don't have to worry about the harder parts. And then finally, being a constructor, if you are the handy type or you've got people in your family that like doing that sort of thing, you could literally take on these harder, more difficult tasks of garden building, garden constructing, any kind of aspect of installing the garden, you could take it on yourself and be the constructor. Just watch out and don't bust your windshield. All right. I hope you feel inspired that if you have had some garden experience, you should absolutely become a garden coach. So this does not mean that you have to quit your day job. It doesn't mean that you have to quit your night job. Anyone can be a garden coach. You can garden coach in the evenings or on the weekends. You can garden coach over the phone. I think that the world needs more garden coaches. I woke up to this reality as I started to really pursue my vision of bringing back the kitchen garden and making it an ordinary part of everybody's life once again. And I realized pretty quickly that we're going to have to bring back gardening as a viable profession for that to happen. It has to be there in order for this industry to take off. Otherwise, we're going to continue to have an industry that's product focused rather than people focused. And as long as that's the case, we're going to have so many people who are sure that they do not have a green thumb, because they're going to buy plants and seeds and all kinds of soil and fertilizers that the stores are selling them, but have no idea if they're the right fit for them and then how to actually use them. So we need more garden coaches. The world needs more garden coaches, and I would love for you to be one of them. So if you have had some gardening success in at least one to two areas of the garden, then you are absolutely ready to teach the freshmen that are coming up right behind you. I wanna help you do that inside my garden coach challenge. So if you're listening to this in real time, or even if you're not, you could probably watch the replays. So go to gardenary.com challenge, sign up and join me. We will start March 1st. I cannot wait to do this with you. Thanks so much for listening. Thank you for being part of this important movement. Thank you for seeing the garden coach industry as a possibility. I especially want to dedicate and thank my clients. You know, when I First started my garden business. Who was it? It was a lawyer. I was asking him for advice, and he said to me, he said, nicole, first, just decide or figure out if you can actually make money doing this, because I'm not sure you can. He obviously did not have the vision for it. And a lot of people, honestly, when I first started, I was so embarrassed to tell them what I was doing and why I. What I was trying to create. Like, I did not want to admit that this was the dream job that I was running after. And, you know, the only people who really made this a reality and the people that made this dream come true are my clients. So I want to dedicate this to them, especially all of my first Houston clients who called me, who ordered a consult from me. I mean, they just made this dream a possibility and a reality. And then I also want to dedicate this to the 135 garden coaches, coaches who have already set up and started running their own garden coach business. Because getting to watch them set up their businesses all over the US and in other parts of the world has given me confidence that this really is a replicable model. It's not just something that happened to me. It's something that can literally happen for people all over the world. And I'm just so thankful they went for it, even when I wasn't sure how I was actually going to train them. Now we've got it all, all established, all figured out on gardenary.com okay, thanks so much for listening. Thank you for growing yourself to the next level. Let's bring back the kitchen garden together and let's bring back the gardening profession as a viable way to make great money. You can pick any of these five ways to get started and I know you're going to be an amazing garden coach. We need more garden coaches, so come join us. Thanks for listening. I'll see you you next week. Thanks so much for listening to the Grow youw Self podcast. You know I love you for it. Please share and subscribe and review the podcast. All those good things every single time that you subscribe, that you download an episode, and especially when you leave a review, it tells the world that this is something that they might want to pay attention to. So thank you so much in advance for doing that. And I wanna make sure you do not miss the fact that this show is sponsored by my Garden Coach Challenge, which is happening March 1st. You can sign up right away@gardenary.com challenge. It is free, it is fun, it is fabulous. You're gonna be inspired and get this step by steps to set up your first garden coach product. Very similar to what we talked about today in the podcast, but with so many more awesome decorations details. Plus you'll get to meet gardeners from all over the place. It's like so much fun. There's hundreds already signed up, so come and join us gardenary.com challenge and thanks again for listening. I love you for it. Have a great week. Sam.