Feeling Stuck in Your Horticulture Business? How Simple Actions Drive Progress & Profits and Defeat Paralysis.

Plant For Profits Column, Leslie F. Halleck

Simple Actions Can Yield Big Returns

As I’m working through reading and grading the project submitted by students in my “The Business of Horticulture” course, I see participants overcoming a common thread that emerges each time I teach the course: Paralysis. Not knowing what to do or when to do it when it comes to either starting a new plant-related business or making an existing business profitable.

One of the biggest hurdles when starting a new business in the green industry, or trying to transition your career into horticulture or gardening, is just not knowing what you don’t know. Sometimes ignorance can propel you along your journey in unexpected and beneficial ways. But it can also keep you stuck in fear of the unknown and cause you to make very expensive and unprofitable decisions that could have been avoided.

Taking action, even small actions, is a necessary step to overcoming entrepreneurial or career paralysis, but taking action with focused intention is key. It’s important to accurately match your passions and proficiencies with the people you want to serve and work with to serve them. When working with new entrepreneurs or career transitioners who seem stuck, I often encourage them to simply start with a very basic exercise, pen to paper, to help illuminate things they do and don’t like to do, and the kinds of people they do and don’t want to work with. Simple as that. If you take my horticulture business course I offer up the following optional exercise and students often comment how surprising and revealing the results are:

EXERCISE

1. Get a pen and paper and make a list of all the things you know how to do (it might be long!)

2. Now, cross out all the things you don’t want to do.

3. Get a second sheet of paper and list the types of customers you may work with in your chosen niche/business. (can be demographic, personality, etc.)

4. Now, cross out the ones you know you don't want to work with.

5. Get a third piece of paper and list the types of people you will likely be working with in your chosen niche/business to make it happen.

3. Cross out all the ones you don't want to work with.

Now...cross reference each list. How does the math add up for you? Now that you know the things you're good at that you want to do (and don't), the customers you want to serve (and don't), and the people you want to work with (and not) to accomplish both...what does that look like? Is your new list a realistic match for your desired business or career path?

Take Action to Find Clarity

It’s interesting how taking the small action of doing this exercise can clarify some pretty important factors you should consider when starting a business, restructuring a struggling business, or changing careers. But unless you make the decision to take the action of sitting down with some paper and a pen - and no screens - to dig a little deeper into your own mindset and motivations, you may continue working against your own interests without even realizing it.

Obviously, taking a horticulture business course is in itself a very intentional action that will help clarify a lot of the unknowns.. But the point of my course is to help people learn which actions they should take next, and then TAKE them. In my course students can choose to write a first draft or a new business plan - even for a fictitious business, or a revision of their existing plan. They could focus specifically on creating a fleshed out marketing strategy for an existing business. They can write a simple action plan for a career transition, or even draft a sales proposal if they haven’t done one before or are trying to fine tune one they already use. Or, they can pitch me on a different project idea that better suits their needs. It’s all about taking the action of writing something that’s tangible and helps them visualize real-world progress.

Paralysis Isn't Just for the Newcomers

The same goes for established businesses and experienced business owners in the horticulture industry. I can’t tell you how many long-running garden centers or landscape design build firms still working without a plan or decisive actions behind their operations. Whilst they are surviving, they are not thriving or profitable, and they can’t seem to figure out why. As I write this more and more garden centers and plant shops are closing every day, so clearly a lack of meaningful focused action is getting the best of many such businesses in our industry.

Fear is often at the root of this dynamic. Fear of actually running the numbers in a business to determine factual profitability, or lack thereof, is very common. Fear of learning you really don't have enough inventory to make your sales goal - so you don't do inventory counts. Fear of having to make the hard decisions that, in your gut, you know you're going to have to make. So instead, you take no action and stay in reaction mode, putting out fire after fire without every working to learn what started them in the first place.

What’s the cure for business or career paralysis? Ultimately I think it comes down to intellectual curiosity, being open to change, and pushing yourself to take action. That, and a willingness to release attachment to the fear of taking action in the first place. Get interested in the why and how behind what it is you want to accomplish, figure out how it works, face the fear that may be preventing you from learning what you need to learn, and then DO SOMETHING with it!