Reap What You Sow

If gardening has taught me one thing, it's that the beginning of "IT" is the most important time no matter what "IT" is. The beginning requires more time, focus, attention, effort, care, and patience. The beginning is when risk of failure is the highest. Odds against outnumber odds for. The beginning is new, and new is often scary. This applies to business, plants, and life... all three of which I am involved in the beginning of. Today I am going to focus on business.

January 1st of this year marks the beginning of my new business Fruit of Labor Landscaping Service LLC. I had worked in the medical field for almost 10 years. Throughout my career good nurses, medics, and other providers all experienced burnout in various ways. I guess I had always been in denial that I'd ever feel that way. Medicine was a passion and one that I worked hard at perfecting. But in the summer of 2021, COVID19 surged and drowned us all. Every shift I would be assigned to Triage of a small community hospital in Florida. The number of patients coming in every day overwhelmed our small facility. I came home every day physically and mentally wrecked. At the end of it all... I was burned out. For the first time in 10 years I was having thoughts of new career fields.

Fruit of Labor was a concept I had been dreaming about for several years. I just hadn't pulled the trigger on it. I always liked the idea of having my own business but felt like it was too unrealistic. Burnout from medicine really made it the decision easier. The guy in the mirror began asking, "why not?" I prayed that if God had a plan for me in this business, that all the doors would open. I haven't hit a closed door yet.

The business focuses on edible landscaping, pollinator gardens, and native landscaping - all my favorite types of landscaping. Edible landscaping in my own yard, "The Serene Forest", was born out of a desire to be more self sufficient and less reliant on the grocery store. My interest in pollinator gardens was born secondary to edible landscaping as I learned how important pollinators were. Native Landscaping was the third interest that was born off learning about pollinator gardening. I believe all three to be the most important landscaping concepts.

Beginning this business has been tough. It has consumed a lot of time, focus, attention, effort, care, and patience. I knew that this was a very critical time in the life of a business. I knew I was going to potentially very quickly find out if the business would work. If my favorite type of landscaping was attractive enough to others that they would pay for it. But I also knew that if I gave it my all in the beginning, I would be setting it up to grow into something great.

I've worked hard to "sow" my business in everything I could for success. My free time became occupied with videos on business, budgeting, landscaping rules, tax laws, and everything in between. I can officially say that I now know more about Excel spreadsheet than I ever thought was possible. I've set up templates for budgets, expense ledgers, invoices, receipts, and expense trackers that have cut down on my time spent on recent projects. I've learned about editing photos and composing videos in order to better deliver estimates and design packages. I've learned how to manage time on projects and not become overwhelmed. I've learned how to determine pricing that is fair to the customer AND myself. Now, I've built the business's very own website to help bring more attention to my brand.

The Serene Forest will be a blog mainly focusing on my own landscape. I don't want to clog it up with boring business posts. The Serene Forest deserves better. It will shadow my Instagram account that posts about my yard. There will be fun posts like "What is it Wednesday" and "Fun Fact Friday". This will be the getaway.

If you've read all the way to this point I'd give you a high five. Hopefully your interest has been peaked. Hopefully you return for more. Hopefully you will interact and grow with me here.

See you......