Not sure if this is necessarily the best sub, but I thought it might be helpful to put for anyone interested in this field
Background, I am 31, have around 8 years experience in corporate finance and analytics. I started my career in accounting with the big 4, and did a lot of different functions for different corporations in finance / CE / analytics roles. Alas, When COVID popped off last April I was laid off from my corporate role and I never really loved working for a corporation so I thought it would be a good time to make a pivot.
Since COVID was emptying offices faster than my bowels after an Indian buffet I thought why not target the plants that remain behind. This started as part hobby (I love gardening), and part how can I make money off of this hobby while I was meandering around doing no much with my severance package?
To start I targeted my old office actually, by directly messaging the office manager. They knew me as someone with a green thumb, someone who could be relied upon, and they agreed that they needed to find some solution for the existing plants within the office after COVID popped off. After some negotiating back and forth we set up a proper invoice for me to maintain 30 existing plants. I was spitballing the number originally, but as you can imagine it was based on my own personal assessment of “how much care do these plants require”? I’ve seen the offices a million times, I had a pretty decent idea.
Once I had a single client I started calling upon lots of different offices in the area that were presented with this same problem. I also partnered with a landscaper (my cousin who mows lawns), as a secondary person to help me fan out and hit different office complexs. Once we had a picture of some of our original offices, there is not as much difficulty attempting to sell “interior design consultation” as well, although that is a rare sell. About 50% of our accounts at this point have come from referrals (either from existing watering clients, or my cousins lawncare clients), 50% from me cold calling. My cold calling method went from befriending a lot of office managers and maintenance managers in my area asking them about their plans for their plants during covid, since I have a pretty active and professional looking linkedin.
One gem of the pandemic that will not last is I offered a rock bottom fee of $80 for “disposal” of plants, for people that I called offering the service too and they didn’t want it, but they needed to get rid of their plants due to no new clients. I don’t make any money on the disposal really, what I make money on is the steady supply of plants that most of the time haven’t died. I have a greenhouse in my backyard that I pack up with a steady supply of plants from disposals and I can flip them, more often than not selling through craigslist and FB marketplace (selling plants is equally as lucrative, some months it’s as high as 40% of our business because we make a lot of effort towards this goal. Some peoples experience varies with facebook marketplace and CL, but I basically list my greenhouse and current stock and say “roll on up between these hours”, because I don’t want to juggle different messages.
The business has so far been a really big success in the first year, we have made enough to generate revenue around 160,000, and pay ourselves around 38,000 (each) which seems extraordinarily high from my perspective. Additionally there is some money saved for taxes, some money saved for expenses, and money saved for reinvestment into the business.
Our goal for next year is to hire 2 employees, both for existing routes and therefore I will have time to occupy the greenhouse more often, and build up a third route. By the end of 2022 we would like to have our business containing 4 routes (3 fulltime, 1 parttime), and a rapid expansion of revenue (shooting for 160,000 to 400,000). This goal I feel is entirely reachable if plant trends stay the same, if indoor plant trends decline it will be a bit of a struggle. One passion project of mine and my brothers currently for 2022 is to build out my shop in my home (my garage), and get it up to spec to build customizable wooden fixtures / cabinets. My brother is a cabinet maker by trade, and is toying with the idea of building customizable cabinets for us so we can penetrate more of the “design consultation / implementation” trade in these offices, rather than just upkeep services. If we can penetrate more of the design space we can really set a lot better prices that fit our drive for profitability a lot better.
Biggest challenges for 2022: * I am worried if indoor plant trends continue * I am worried if office space declines and watering services decline * I am worried that I am eating too much into my personal stock of indoor plants and my propagation rate will need keep up with demand since propagation + growth cycle takes up much more time and in order to fully keep up with demand would probably require that I expand my greenhouse into something bigger * I am worried about who I am going to find for my employees (right now I am approaching it with a strategy of attempting to find two people for $25 an hour that I absolutely trust, quality over quantity).
So yea thats the gist of it, happy to answer any questions for anyone curious in this field
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