3 Ways to Earn Back Your Garden Consultant Certification Investment

We Need More Garden Consultants

We here at Gardenary are on a mission to make the garden ordinary again for everyone.

If you were to take a trip to your local hardware store, you might conclude that gardening is ordinary already. After all, there are a ton of plants and other gardening products available for sale. There are also plenty of landscaping services should you need them. In total, $150 billion is spent every year in the US on products and services in the gardening and landscaping industries. That's billion with a B!

And yet, if you were to ask your friends, your neighbors, or people in your community whether they're gardening with confidence, the chance that they'll say yes is very low. You're more likely to hear them call themselves a plant killer because every flower or herb they bring home from the big box store dies. When they hear you know your way around a tomato vine or two, they're likely to say something like: "Oh, must be nice to have a green thumb!"

Our vision for the garden industry is that we don't need more products. We need more garden consultants—people who are experienced in the garden and willing to pass their knowledge along to others.

In the Gardenary Consultant Certification, we teach gardeners how to package their experience up and share it with people in their local town or city. This is our answer to the huge gap in the gardening industry between money spent on products and actual gardening success.

If you were to become a garden consultant, you'd still provide great products and services to people who are eager to start gardening. You'd just combine them with the power of consulting.

Our mission at Gardenary is for every single person to have the confidence and knowledge to grow a little bit of their own food. You can be a vital part of that mission. Here's how.

It's Easier to Make Money Than to Save Money

I heard this for the first time way back in 2015. This was back when I was a mom to four young kids (whom I was homeschooling) and an active saver. My goal was to save save save money. And still, no matter how hard I worked to reduce our expenses, it felt like we were always saying the words, “That sounds nice, but not right now. We don’t have the money.”

I was clipping coupons at gymnastics one day while my kids took their lesson, when my friend said, "What are you doing? This is your one hour off all day, and you're spending it clipping coupons?"

I told her that our finances were a little tight, and since I was home all day, I was just trying to find ways to help out each and every month.

That's when she told me these game-changing words: "I don’t focus so much on the money I’m going to save. I focus on the money I’m going to make. Because it’s a lot easier to make money than to save money."

Her words had a profound effect on me. There I was, working so hard to save our hard-earned money, but no matter how much effort I put into it, I could only save so much on our groceries or bills. Think about it: There's always a ceiling to how much money you can save. In other words, you can only save what you already have.

In the time that I was spending trying to save us pennies, I could have instead gotten creative and found a way to make that same amount of money, if not more, that I was hoping to save, by doing something I was good at. Because there's no limit on the potential to grow your business. There's no ceiling on the amount of new things you can sell.

Instead of saving, I needed to go serve people. Instead of expending all my energy being financially conservative, I could turn that energy into creative efforts. 

Make Money Doing Something You're Good at

I started Rooted Garden with a refund check for $450 from a preschool we decided not to send my daughter to. I invested that money into my new business instead of putting it right back in the bank. (I'm proud to say this is the only money I've used from my family's account for my business since then.)

In its first year of existence, my company made over $100,000, and in 2021, it grossed over $1 million. In six years, this little company I started out of my own backyard had grossed over $2.5 million.

Just imagine what would have happened if I'd taken that check for $450 and put it in the bank instead and just saved it.

It would have earned a small bit of interest, but there's no way it would have become $2.5 million without entrepreneurship.

As I grew my business, I quickly realized my friend's wise words hold true for companies also: it is easier for your business to make $3,000 than it is for your business to save $3,000. 

Keeping these words in mind will expand your possibilities as you're growing your business.

What amount of money are you willing to invest in your dreams so that you can start and launch your own small business? Are you ready to refocus your energy on making money instead of saving money?

We've priced membership in the Gardenary Consultant Certification to reflect the cost of one business school class. But we deliver way more than any one business school course can because we're actually showing you how to start your own small business in the garden industry. We want you to be able to earn back your investment in GCC as quickly as possible.

So, here's how you can recoup your investment and earn your first $3,000 as a garden consultant. Or if you've already started your own garden consulting business and are looking to increase your profits, here's how to earn your next $3,000.

Ways to Earn $3,000 and Make up Your Investment in the Gardenary Consultant Certification

You can sell a lot of a low-priced item, or you can sell a little of a higher-priced item to make back your investment in GCC.

To sell a lot of a low-priced item, invest in marketing. Your success, if you need to sell hundreds or thousands of a product, depends on getting the message out there. 

If I'm going to host a low-priced workshop, I need to have a lot of people sign up in order to profit. It's worth it then to pay to run Facebook ads in order to reach a lot of people who might be interested in my product. When you’re just getting started, you might not necessarily want to pay for Facebook ads. You might instead pay with your time and energy in order to ensure a lot of people are even aware of your product. You might, for instance, hold events or parties to spread the news (like the little garden party pictured below). 

In contrast, to sell something at a high price point, you'll really have to invest in service. Our GCC is an expensive item, so that means I have to give and give and give when it comes to the level of service provided. I have to over-deliver on the value to each and every single person who joins. In turn, I don’t need to sell this product to thousands of people; I don’t even need to tell thousands of people.

Here are three ways to make $3,000—one with a low-priced product, one with a high-priced product, and one that meets in the middle.

The First Way to Earn $3k: Sell 100 of a $30 Product

Something you could sell for about $30 would be a live gardening class. When I say live, I mean either in person or over Zoom. What’s nice about a live class is that you’re just teaching, just delivering information. You don’t have to give them a deliverable like a planting plan or a potted plant or even just seeds to take home with them. 

To make $3,000, you’ll need to teach 100 different people, but whether you accomplish that by teaching 100 people in one class or breaking it up into several different classes is up to you.  

So you need to sell 100 $30 products to make back your $3K investment in your business.

The Second Way to Earn $3k: Sell 10 of a $300 Product

Something you could sell for $300 would be a garden consultation with deliverables. That means you'd do an in-person or virtual consult with the client and add something like a planting plan, a health plan (if you’re one of our coaches who focuses on nutrition), a native garden or pollinator garden planting plan, or even a full garden design. There are all kinds of possibilities for deliverables, depending on your niche. Having some kind of product/deliverable to go with your consult helps a lot of clients make sense of what you can do for them. Remember, most people are used to buying products from this industry. 

The Third Way to Earn $3k: Sell 1 of a $3,000 Product

If you can manage to sell something for $3,000, you obviously only need to sell one. Something you could sell for $3,000 or more would be a complete raised bed kitchen garden system with installation. You'd provide a raised bed, plus irrigation, trellises, customization, etc.  

This type of product is how members of our The First Way to Earn $3k: Sell 100 of a $30 Product

Something you could sell for about $30 would be a live gardening class. When I say live, I mean either in person or over Zoom. What’s nice about a live class is that you’re just teaching, just delivering information. You don’t have to give them a deliverable like a planting plan or a potted plant or even just seeds to take home with them. 

To make $3,000, you’ll need to teach 100 different people, but whether you accomplish that by teaching 100 people in one class or breaking it up into several different classes is up to you.  

So you need to sell 100 $30 products to make back your $3K investment in your business.

The Second Way to Earn $3k: Sell 10 of a $300 Product

Something you could sell for $300 would be a garden consultation with deliverables. That means you'd do an in-person or virtual consult with the client and add something like a planting plan, a health plan (if you’re one of our coaches who focuses on nutrition), a native garden or pollinator garden planting plan, or even a full garden design. There are all kinds of possibilities for deliverables, depending on your niche. Having some kind of product/deliverable to go with your consult helps a lot of clients make sense of what you can do for them. Remember, most people are used to buying products from this industry. 

The Third Way to Earn $3k: Sell 1 of a $3,000 Product

If you can manage to sell something for $3,000, you obviously only need to sell one. Something you could sell for $3,000 or more would be a complete raised bed kitchen garden system with installation. You'd provide a raised bed, plus irrigation, trellises, customization, etc.  

This type of product is how members of the Gardenary Consultant Certification make back their investment with only one client.  make back their investment with only one client. 

Which of these three options I outlined do you think is the easiest for you to do? Which one would you focus on first? Would you feel more comfortable going deep with great service or wide with great marketing... or meeting somewhere in the middle? 

In addition to these three ways, there are potentials at each level for a total of seven different ways to earn $3,000—you just have to adjust who you're selling it to.

Inside the Gardenary Consultant Certification, you'll learn how to create products at each of these seven levels as a garden consultant. You'll also learn what to do on a successful consultation, how to create valuable deliverables for your clients, and more.

Join Us Inside the Gardenary Consultant Certification

I didn't create the idea of a garden coach or consultant. But what I have done is take all of the things I wish someone had taught me when I was starting my own garden consulting business, plus the things I've learned from helping others start their businesses, and I've built those things into easy-to-follow lessons for you to study.  

These three ways to earn $3,000 will serve as your first stop on your roadtrip to success. You'll find lots of other valuable resources and lessons inside the Gardenary Consultant Certification to give you the confidence you need to become a profitable garden consultant and business owner.