Would Someone Hire You to Be Their Garden Consultant?

Do you know how much money is being spent right now in your city on gardening? The answer is gonna surprise you. So every time I've pored over the statistics for the industry of gardening and landscaping, I still cannot believe how much money people in the United States spend on the garden. And yet almost every person I bump into, pretty much every single person I bump into swears to me that they have a black thumb and that they've never, ever been able to keep a plant alive. So the stats tell us that in the United States, over $150 billion. That's billion with a B. Are spent annually, every single year in the United States on things that have to do with landscaping and the garden. So about $100 billion are spent every year on landscaping services. So this ranges from mowing the yard, blowing the yard, weed, eating the yard all the way to turning, you know, a landscape over, to planting loads of perennials, planting trees, planting gardens, all the services associated with landscaping. $100 billion spent in the United States every single year. The other part, $50 billion, are spent on garden goods, garden products, landscaping products. So plants, plants and more plants, the pots, the trellises, all of the things, the goods that can be bought for the garden. That makes up 50, $50 billion of sales every single year in the United States. And yet nobody seems to know what they're doing with the garden. Everybody tells me they can't keep a plant alive. So what is all of our money accomplishing? That was my question when I started my garden consulting business back in 2015. If everybody's spending all this money on plants, everybody wants their landscape to look beautiful, why is everybody so frustrated and upset that their plants keep dying? What can we do about this? That is where garden consulting comes in. It's not a landscaping service. It's not a product. It's right in the middle. It gives the advice and the coaching and the consulting that's necessary to make sure that the people spending this $150 billion actually has success with their investment. So I have an exercise for you. If you're wondering if you've ever thought, could I turn my love for the garden, Could I turn my passion and my skill in the garden into a business? Oh, no, no, I couldn't do that. Because people, they never spend money on the garden. I mean, people who garden garden to save money, and there's no way I could, like, actually make a living doing that. Well, I want to pause you for a second and give you a quick exercise so that you know how much money is spent in your town or city on the garden. And I think the number is going to shock you and hopefully encourage you that even if you made just a small, tiny, little bitty fraction of that, you could absolutely make a living, support your family, and be out in the garden for your career. I mean, sign me up. I did eight years ago. So the math works out this way. We got about $150 billion being spent every year in the United States on land, landscaping and gardening. Right? $150 billion. We've got about 330 million people in the United States. So if you do that math, it about works out to $450 a person. Now, we got little babies, including in there. We got, you know, people who have no desire to. To plant or. Or to do anything with a garden. So you can imagine some people, they're going to be spending a lot more than $450. And some people, including, like, my kids, they're not spending any money on the garden yet, but it works out. The average is 450 a person. All right, so I give you that number. The only number you've got to figure out is how many people live in your town or city. So you might be in a big city, in a small city, somewhere in between. I'm going to show you the numbers for three cities to give you an idea. But all you got to do is figure out the population of your own city and. And then you're going to find out how much money is being spent on the garden right where you live. So let me show you first. Nashville. That's where I live right now. N. Nashville proper has a population of just under 700,000 people. That means that every single year in Nashville, $314 million are spent on landscaping and gardens. Okay, 314 million bucks. That means that there could be 300 businesses that each make a million dollars in the landscaping services. 300 businesses in Nashville could all make a million dollars. You could have 3,000 businesses in Nashville that all make. Oh, I just messed this up. I tried to do math in my head, and that's so dangerous. Anyway, you could have them making $100,000. Oh, that's it. That's it. 3,000 businesses could make $100,000, and they would all be able to. To. To make a hundred thousand dollars each covering this number. It's huge. Crazy. All right, so now let's go to a really big city, Houston, where I used to live. That's where I started my business. There's 2.2 million people in Houston proper. Houston likes to spread out a lot. Okay, so Houston's got 2.2 million people. Guess how much money is spent on the garden each year? $998 million. $998 million a year is spent on gardening there in Houston. All right, so you're like, well, Nicole, I don't live in a big city. I mean, that's really impressive and stuff. But let's just break that down. 998 million. You could have 998 businesses that each make a million dollars in Houston, 998 landscaping services that each gross a million dollars, and you would just be scratching the surface. You'd just be right there at the top. Now you might be like, I don't live in a big city. I don't live in even a city as the size of Nashville. This still wouldn't work for me. Let me bring you to my suburb. I lived in. In Chicago. So our suburb, there was about 20,000 people. Even in that little town of 20,000 people, in one year, $9,225,000 is spent each year on landscaping services. That means even in that tiny little town of 20,000 people, $9 million is spent. So you could have nine businesses that each make a million dollars. Now, the thing I got to show you, though, the magic is that this is just for charging for landscaping services and products. What's not in here is consulting. That's even above and beyond this $150 billion. So when you come in as a garden consultant, you have a new product, you have something different, you have something special. So much more. Because so far in the landscaping industry, people are either selling you a service or selling you a product. But no one, except for us as garden consultants is helping you know what to do with it, helping you know how to keep it alive. Helping you know how to become a gardener yourself. Every other service, every other product that makes up that $150 billion, it doesn't give the client success. It doesn't help the client learn a new thing and develop a new skill, and it just gives the client a plant. It just gives the client a garden. It just gives the client a new tree. But it doesn't do anything to help the client know how to take care of the tree, how to keep the garden alive, how to make their landscape continue to thrive season after season. And when you come in as a garden consultant, you help do just that. So do this math with me and figure out how much money is spent in your town or city, and then ask yourself what if I got just a little bit of that? What if I could come in with my new skill as a garden consultant and help people make the most of their services and keep the plants that they paid so much money alive for once? What would that look like for my own life? This was a question I asked myself that completely changed the trajectory of my life and my career. And it's the same question that gardeners all over the country and across the world have answered inside the Gardenary Consultant Certification Program. So if this number intrigues you, if you like the number of the money that's being spent in your city or town, and you want to make sure people make the most of their investment, then you've got to consider becoming a Gardenary consultant. You can learn all about our program and apply to be accepted@gardenary.com I hope this number surprises you, and I hope that you take this as an encouragement that you can make a living as a garden consultant too. I'll see you next time. 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.