Green Industry Expertise: What are you worth and how replaceable are you?
You: “So, what do you for a living?”
Me: “I’m a professional horticulturist.”
You: “OH, I need you to come over to my house and tell me what to do with my landscape!”
Me: “Sure, you can book that online with me“
You: “Oh, well you can just come over for dinner and you can walk the property with me!”
Me: “Well, this is what I do professionally so I do charge, here are my rates.”
You: “Well it’s just gardening, no big deal. I have lots of zucchini in my garden right now, you can have some of those in trade!”
Me: “Ummmm, I don’t work for food, do you?”
You: “Well, I’m a lawyer so I have a real job.”
Me: “BYE”
You: “Ok I’ll just look it up on ChatGPT.”
Me: “Cool, I’ll stop paying my lawyer big bucks to review my contracts and have ChatGPT just do it for me instead.”
Rinse and repeat with accountants, medical professionals, chefs, HR managers, marketing professionals, realtors, financial advisors...you name it. Most often this type of conversation happens to me in the middle of my paying them (you) for services. The lack of self-awareness and blatant disrespect is palpable.
How many times as a professional in the green industry have you had some form of this conversation? The demand for our specialized expertise and experience is very high - the consumer perception of the value of that expertise and experience is very low. This is something those of us who have invested decades in deep scientific knowledge and applied horticulture (which is NOT the same as home gardening) know all too well.
The last part is a new evolution of that conversation (I’ll use AI instead of hiring you), but I’m curious why all the professionals who want us to trade our professional advice for free (or food), don’t seem to realize their professions and jobs aren’t any more important or complicated than ours, and are just as replaceable by AI, and thus their value these days may not be what they think it is?
Had the lawyer, doctor, accountant offered up trade for their services for me or my business at a commensurate amount based on my rates and the time I’d put in on consulting for them, that might be something I’d consider. But that NEVER happens.
I’m hearing more and more stories related to me by professionals about their clients telling THEM to “just go look it up on ChatGPT” when the client doesn’t like their advice. Or “I’ll just use ChatGPT to design my landscape instead of hiring you”. Just the next step in the devaluation most of us have experienced our entire careers. Now, I pity the fool who hires me onto a project and then tells me to go look something up with AI - they’ll get a mouthful and then I'll fire them. But not everyone in this industry is in a financial position to cast aside a paycheck due to blatant professional disrespect.
Ultimately, until more green industry professionals become one with the word "No" and learn to set better and more confident boundaries around our time, perception of value for what we have to offer, getting paid appropriately is always going to be an uphill battle. And until the industry invests more effort into marketing the professions of horticulture and related green industry fields, the market will remain wholly uneducated about who we are and what we actually offer.
What are your responses when friends, family, and followers - and other professionals in your network - expect constant free advice from you as a horticulture industry pro? Or tell you they’ll just use AI instead of you?
