Hey welcome back everyone.
Today's guest is Sarah Margulisi.
She is a business owner, she's a musician, and she's a mother.
Taking a non-traditional life path can seem really scary, but sticking to a traditional
route can feel unfulfilling and boring.
Sarah's journey shows us how leaning into uncertainty can lead to unexpected growth
both personally and professionally.
Today we will discuss Sarah's relationship with imposter syndrome, why she believes blue
collar work offers untapped potential for Gen Z, how taking care of her employees made
her successful, why she never finished high school, and why that's a good thing, what
it was like to raise herself and live alone at 16, her struggles with anxiety and depression,
how she learned to appreciate the journey while staying focused on her goals, and much
more.
If you are enjoying these episodes, you could do one big favor for me.
This show only grows from word of mouth, so please share this with someone that you know
who you think will enjoy it as well.
Thank you all for listening.
Five kids was enough I think.
I have another little sister so there's six, but yeah I was the youngest of five so.
Oh so you got a big family as well?
Yeah.
Hose fights in the house.
No, hose fights in the house is crazy.
We lived in Tucson so we had all tile boards.
And you brought the hose inside.
Yeah there was no place you could hide.
That was kind of the idea which was terrible.
That's horrible.
And it would dry pretty quickly because it was so dry and hot.
Yeah.
Somehow my mom never figured it out.
We told her years later.
I don't know.
She never saw how everything inside was wet.
Now we managed to clean it up you know before she got home from work.
These are some innovative kids.
Yeah it's like when you don't have money you come up with a lot of really crazy games.
Yeah.
You know.
We'll do a proper introduction.
Welcome on Sarah.
Great to have you here.
Today I want to touch on a lot of different things about your business, so your personal
life and seeing how you've navigated to become who you are today and how you've had to live
bravely go out of your comfort zone to do those things.
So I want to start at the beginning of native earth.
I know you started it to a side hustle for your band.
Yes.
Which that was so surprising to me.
I was like huh band and gardening?
These are like two like way usually considered pretty separate.
So I kind of want you to tell me about those early days.
How did it really become the full-time hustle and why did the music not become the full-time?
Well probably the fastest explanation would be I did a really thorough job and because
of that the work just started flowing in like crazy which was kind of you know when you
show people that you're really good at what you do and then you're able to manage you
know your time well.
It turned into next thing I knew honestly it's hard to explain.
I had to hire people and once I started hiring people I knew I was responsible also for other
people's income so it became more serious to me.
It wasn't just about me so if I screwed it up I was going to screw it up for everybody
and so there was that motivation of making sure to take care of the community at the
same time and then I thought well this is great let's just keep building on this and
then I did for a while kind of play in a band when the company was coasting for a small
period of time but then I got pregnant with my first child and so that really changes
your perspective on looking at where your priorities need to sort of lie for a bit.
So yeah I think it might alter from maximizing for fun and enjoyment and now you have to
take care of another human.
Yes.
That kind of changes everything.
So when you were starting out what motivated you for this to be the business and then how
did you go about actually starting it like getting your first client getting in people's
doors?
So I worked for another landscape company for a short period of time for about a year
and a half and I made a lot of connections within the industry themselves.
I always knew that I wanted to have something to do with plants as part of my career just
because it runs in my family's blood and it's something that just I've always found super
enjoyable because plants give back in ways that you know I joke that humans don't you
know they don't talk back.
If you treat them well they just look really beautiful.
There's a lot of reward based upon it and so when I quit that job to start my own company
I gave them so much notice like three months notice because I was their horticulturist
and they ended up helping me get my first few jobs because I had made some really solid
relationships and made sure not to burn bridges when I left instead you know and a lot of
people I think sometimes when they're ready to make a change they act irrationally I guess
instead of thinking that you know in any industry there's always people that all know each other.
It doesn't matter what the industry is and people talk.
So I was known as Smiley and this nursery was asked by someone else that then said do
you know anybody and it turned into my first really big client without getting too detailed
and then it was just based upon my skill sets and my ability to make the property look as
beautiful as I could.
So I hope that kind of answers that.
So a roundabout thing of just honestly also having a really strong work ethic no matter
how tired I was or if I had gone out the night before I'd always be there the next day ready
to go and found a lot of there's a lot of satisfaction in doing a physical job as well
as something where at the end of the day you can see the results of your work.
You're not just pushing paper around or serving coffee or doing something like that.
You're like wow this looks horrible now it looks amazing and like everyone feels so much
better after they see that and the clients love it.
Super high attention to detail.
Yeah I think there's something about seeing the impact of your work when you're doing
it versus you're sitting on a laptop writing emails responding to messages and you don't
really ever see this big beautiful thing you've created versus with plants you might actually
get that.
I'm actually working on remodeling a house right now that I bought.
I really do appreciate that physical labor where it's like oh you actually see the output
of your hands immediately after you've done it which is really really nice.
Yeah and I find that a lot of people have been disconnected from that feeling of like
a hard day's work because so many people were convinced that it was a job that was beneath
them and didn't ever think that it could turn into something that could be highly successful
and highly lucrative and create a community of its own and it just sort of was treated
as like a blue collar thing and so I specialized on purpose on more of a horticultural side
and then made sure to make friends with people at the Botanic Gardens and found mentors and
worked for free in their yard so they could teach me stuff and I created my own internship
essentially.
I was like hey I'll come weed your garden teach me and they were like okay that's great.
It's pretty amazing what you can get if you just ask people for help.
Like I think a lot of people are afraid to kind of ask for help.
It kind of makes you look like you don't have the skill set or don't have the ability to
do the thing but I think people who have experience really appreciate that earnestness to learn.
It's respecting the work that's come before you and your elders honestly.
I know it maybe sounds cheesy or something or I don't want to preface it too much.
It's amazing how many people shy away from mentorship and yet there's all these people
out there that would love to pass on this knowledge that really is just better obtained
when you do it in person versus reading it in a book or taking a class right.
The hands on experience is just you can't beat that kind of education and honestly there's
so many people out there that are so wise that would love to teach the next generation
especially when it comes to passing the torch when it comes to gardens because this industry
is kind of in a little bit of trouble so we'll see what happens.
Yeah I think you touched on something interesting a second ago which is that people see kind
of blue collar jobs just kind of beneath them and then this kind of big push for going to
college getting an education getting a nice white collar job although now we're seeing
that these people coming out of college and they can't really get a job.
They don't really have that dream that was sold to them and then people who are getting
into trades getting a physical labor actually doing quite well.
Yes, yeah the whole trade field is doing exceedingly well and is at least 15% understaffed on average
in Colorado in my industry especially for actual skilled people that know what they're
doing and it's kind of created an interesting situation here where all of a sudden people
that used to we call it chuck in a truck you know like chuck in a truck that's got his
mower and his blower you know those people really aren't around in the same way anymore
and so they're having to either go to large corporate entities where they have a crew
that sort of constantly has massive turnover and or they find like the small small companies
where it's like one or two gardeners maybe three there's not as much consistency or systems
to it and then there's my business which sort of fits in that Goldilocks zone which is a
corporation technically however it's not it's like still a mom-and-pop vibe right and so
when we are going to these clients and explaining to them what they're getting for the money
that they're spending they're still spending less than they would at the big corporate
level and maybe they're spending a little bit more than the garden people that just
like one per like the chuck in the truck or someone like that right however the quality
of work is just so much higher and so that's really what I've strived for is just making
sure the quality of what we do is really really high and explaining to my clients the value
of what they're spending their money on so it's also a matter of trying to explain the
value to the client sometimes you have to bring them back to where you're at and say
hey you know some people spend a ton of money on a purse or a ton of money to go out to
eat or to go to France you know you have to prioritize what's important to you so if your
backyard is really important to you that should be somewhere where you put your investment
and so when COVID happened especially it my business exploded because everybody was stuck
at home right and they're we should change this we should do this we should do that yeah
they really looked closely at their yards so yeah no yeah I think that one of these
things that getting into gardening getting into trades getting into physical labor it
seems kind of scary to take a non-traditional role and not go the traditional route but
you dropped out of high school so what gave you the the bravery or the the gumption to
kind of go off on your own take a very non-traditional path honestly I had imposter syndrome for
a little while right because on my resume now mind you this is before LinkedIn really
because it was 25 years ago or so that I really entered the workforce and I ended up getting
jobs working as like office manager and inventory control specialist I was I don't I don't know
why when I first lived in San Francisco I worked at a nursery and I fell in love with
that job I loved it it was the most rewarding thing but I moved to Colorado in the middle
of a snowstorm and knew that I'd have to wait until the next season to get back into gardening
but then I ended up in this other world where I was getting paid really well to do this
desk job and then decided I was miserable and I quit what was considered a really high
paying good job with stock options and benefits and all these things to jump in and go you
know what I'm willing to take a hit because I'm just miserable and when you love what
you do you tend to do a really good job so to tie that back into the LinkedIn thing it's
like people couldn't search you as easily so I could just put a Tobacco School of the
Arts and Toronto Canada I wasn't lying they would just assume that that was college was
like oh it was high school and so you know there was that feeling of imposter syndrome
I would never lie but I always was nervous somebody would figure out maybe I didn't have
a degree in this right and then I discovered over time that nobody really cares if you
have a degree in something they just care that you can do a job right so there was an
engineer that I worked for in from South Africa and he said the final test was then being
locked into the library and they were given a question that they've never learned anything
on and he said when hiring you always want to figure out what can people learn not what
do they already know and that really changed the way that I looked at doing this job and
it was like I can keep reading I can keep learning I can work with these mentors I can
work with people ask questions and so being curious I swear has probably been the biggest
defining factor of making the business what it is because I'm always learning new stuff
every day every single day you cannot learn everything in horticulture you'd be a liar
if you said you knew everything yeah and that's the same about everything the more you know
the more you know that you don't know yeah right when you come came into that really
nice role and you hated it and then you wanted to transition to something new what was that
transition period like like when you finally let it go and then when you actually have
this later paradigm shift for you like oh I can continue learning and I'm actually good
at this what was that that beginning period like my family thought I was a little bit
crazy especially with my background of not having a high school diploma at that point
that I would give up on something that was somewhat of a sure bet however I just again
the turning point was the fruits of the labor like not to use a gardening analogy but you
see the work that you do and it's so fulfilling at the end of the day you know if you have
anxiety you've got depression you have insomnia like my god like go garden for eight hours
a day you're gonna be tired you're gonna be hungry and you're gonna feel relaxed pretty
much and sleep pretty well most people it really tends to hear you're outside there's
actual microorganisms in the soil that they found that when you're touching them with
your hands they release serotonin in your body so gardening actually literally makes
you happy so for me it was a no-brainer and and I think it can relate to any job really
is just being yeah I just took the leap because once you start in that direction I just had
this drive to see how far I could take it and it became somewhat of almost a challenge
like how far can I go with this at this point right yeah so which has its pitfalls too what
do you mean by that uh because sometimes when you get so hyper focused on the success of
it all maybe you miss some of the elements of again I'm gonna use a dumb analogy it's
like the forest through the trees right or you know nose to spite your face like you're
working really hard but are you really enjoying all that you have built are you just stressing
constantly about making it bigger or being able to pay more or being able to cover costs
right because as you grow you have more expenses so it's not just because you get bigger you
make more money you just take on a lot more responsibility so I luckily was pretty good
with taking on that responsibility but I could see how some people get really scared so I
would say the other most important factor was to surround myself with other people that
I could trust and not be fearful of this idea of training people and teaching them these
skills because there's this idea of false scarcity or that somebody's gonna take what
you know a lot of tradesmen get really weird about wanting to teach people what they know
because they think someone's gonna take it from them and it's just really just a false
scarcity mentality there's there's plenty of work to go around for everybody and so
if clients would ditch you to work for somebody that you trained then you don't want them
as a client anyway it creates a very ugly environment yeah did you know that innately
when you started out that helping others and bringing them up teaching them would lead
to more growth within the company as opposed to kind of keeping your own secrets to yourselves
your secret sauce yes 100% I saw a bunch of people in the industry older than me that
were burning out because they had never really trained their next apprentice they hadn't
taken the time to pass on that knowledge that they had so it was just them and maybe one
or two other people that they had to manage so I did kind of know that from the beginning
that the only way to make this a sustainable industry or a sustainable job within this
industry was to grow and invite more people into the tent right to really like show people
what it is that this job can do and I've been burned for sure like I'm not gonna lie there's
times that I've had ex-employees completely burn me and but then I've also helped six
ex-employees start their own gardening businesses as well all over the country and it's really
amazing to see them flourish and I send them clients sometimes the ones that are local
so yeah it's people want to work in a job where they don't feel scared like and they
don't feel like they have to lie to you too and say oh this job is everything to me I
want to be here forever you know and then they leave in a year yeah you just want to
be open to like everyone has dreams and maybe this job is just a stopover for some people
but for me it's my career obviously at this point so it's just managing managing people's
expectations and yeah I don't know if I got off topic a little bit you can go wherever
you want how did you manage to kind of cultivate this mom-and-pop vibe very open it feels like
you're connected to the company to the business while also growing and scaling this up again
then it came down to having a few key other employees and players that were able to act
you know as the the me from the beginning right where I used to be the foreman on every
job site for the first five years right you know so it's very hands-on and even my clients
who I still have a few of them from that beginning era were really somewhat disappointed being
like well you're not going to be our foreman anymore I'm like well I'm growing you know
that's a good thing right so you got to trust this new person and so in order to I think
make that leap it just again it comes back to I'd rather have trust and hope and faith
in people than assume the worst in everyone so I sort of I I hope for the best and I still
prepare for bad scenarios and I would say that one thing that I would offer to anybody
if they're going to go into business regardless of what it is is really have an exit strategy
like a really clear concise way is if you decided you didn't want to do this anymore
how would you get out because looking at that kind of frees you up to not be afraid if it
goes sideways or you want to sell it or or if you have a business partner somebody that
you're connected with and just having those honest conversations about what if this goes
sideways because things happen people get you know hit by a car you know you could have
a business partner they get his you know hit by a car or you know whatever that is so the
other thing I would say is really really really important is systems having like a really
good system that anybody could follow you just kind of hand them the manual it's like
a lot of people don't take the time to create a system Warren Buffett actually said that
quote which I'm not like a fan of his but he said I would never buy a company that an
idiot couldn't run yeah and so sometimes what's scary for business owners is they feel as
if I'm not important anymore for my company to function your ego takes a massive hit and
you get freaked out you know I see this happen all the time and then they end up running
themselves and their business into the ground as opposed to passing on that information
yeah and creating a system that most people could follow because the problem is they're
making themselves the limiting point of the business yes and they're also the face of
it so it cannot be bought it cannot function without them yeah and that's a dangerous place
yeah that makes sense how do you kind of build these systems and what does that look like
in implementation when you're creating a system that anyone can use and continue it on and
it still keeps the the Sarah of what you put into the business I think there's a lot of
trial and error obviously that went down over many many years hey let's try this what about
this and finding people either you know following the system or not but we live in a technological
age at this point really you have no excuse so that like back when I started this thing
I drove around with like a Nokia phone you know no you know this hard heavy thing and
I had a map book of the city of Denver right and like encyclopedias of plant names and
pest problems and all that stuff and I'm always going guys you have the whole world in your
hand right now right and so you know it's just like trying out different systems and
seeing whether they work or not I guess and making sure that you're not making them too
cumbersome as well because sometimes you end up running into the problem where if you create
too many systems and then people feel like they are just a robot in their job there's
no autonomy so I don't know it's a hard question to answer really in a succinct way I mean at
this point we've narrowed it down to a few things but again it was it's just like having
a folder on each client you know and I guess it would depend on the industry so every industry
is different on how and what systems they would use I would just say try a bunch of
them keep trying stuff until you find something that actually works for your organization
however really having a system in place is important and not just piles of paper or just
I don't know like what's our budget right now who knows you know you should be able
to look at what your you know your your P&L sheet looks like your P&L sheet should always
be very clean and concise you know that's another thing that people shy away from I
think is sometimes knowing the actual financial health of their business it can be scary because
sometimes it could show you that you might be in a difficult place but the reality is
you can't fix it if you don't know about it yeah yeah I think that's maybe one of the
sticking points that your classic small business that is mom and pop kind of hits on is that
they're not really tracking any metrics they're not really looking at any systems they're
kind of just selling to customers and people come back and that's kind of the whole thing
yeah and so yeah you you figured out what that thing was for your business and it's
gone on to grow to a massive scale and somehow still keep that mom and pop vibe which is
very impressive thank you yeah we it's it's it takes a village though it really does it
takes a community of people to do it so and I think treating people also with respect
and kindness and not you know I've fired clients before if they treat my employees like crap
I'm gonna be I think it actually happened today where we had somebody that got yelled
at by it wasn't even the homeowner it was their housekeeper or something it was like
really odd so it's turned into this whole thing where it's like yeah that happens again
we're not coming back yeah it's like I don't allow people to mistreat the employees right
it's not like business first no employee first and that's how I ended up founding one of
the founding members of good business Colorado which is a small business organization where
we do legislative work where we helped pass family and medical leave act we helped pass
the sick time you know bill we helped pass all these different legislative pieces because
we were already ethically running our companies really well and we felt let's lay a level
of playing field right like I already give my people way more than I'm supposed to by
law wouldn't it be cool we kind of forced that would be cool if we force everybody else
to get on board you know and but not over regulatory but happy it's like on my website
it says happy gardeners make happy gardens right it's so obvious to me if people are
miserable at their job they're gonna do a miserable job so you have to put the employee
welfare at really you're very top tier now at the same time don't let them take advantage
because sometimes that will also happen and then you work into this mentality of you have
people that have these like kind of higher expectations or hate to use the word entitlement
because it's thrown around a lot these days however there is sometimes like an entitlement
mentality when you treat someone and pay someone really really well that's great and all and
it's worked out for me in the long run but it has to come along with making sure that
they're doing their job as well and the only way they do that is if the whole company kind
of holds them accountable now one person yeah right we're like this is the company culture
which I also know is kind of a weird thing to say these days I don't know I'm yeah people
are pretty anti-company culture and pizza parties they don't like that I get that I get that
um however it still exists regardless if we want it to not exist or not I think the bigger
issue might be with corporate company culture when it feels lifeless right like company culture that
exists and is full of life I think is a great thing to have and it does exist yeah I mean every
company has a culture yeah whether we want it to or not you know it's sort of like I have a hand
and so yeah but it is interesting again the use of words these days and making sure to be very
you know aware and conscious which I think has also been a really great thing you know again
finding the right person for the right job too is another thing it's like that a lot of people
don't spend time getting to know or making sure their organization even if it's not me
getting to know somebody I make sure that the foreman or the operations manager or whoever
they're checking in they're saying it's not maybe a uptight review process but it's like how can we
better help you or what things are you liking or not liking I mean I had it I had a guy that worked
for NSA um really high level uh and just needed a break right yeah and he's like I just want to push
wheelbarrows for a summer it's like great here you go Pete it's like push the wheelbarrow and he was
happy as happy could be and I have other people that want to do leadership that are great at it
and then other people if you put them into a leadership role they don't know what to do with
it sometimes so the other way I look at it is that that person that's loyal that's been there for a
really long time also deserves to get pay raises in the same way that your management does right
because you need those dependable reliable people they're no better or worse than the people that
are running and managing we just have different ways that our brains function so I think that
that's another important thing when people talk about you know just go flip burgers it's an empty
meaningless job you know everybody has who's gonna flip the burger then yeah who's gonna clean the
toilet I don't know I've always been quite disappointed in society's viewpoint on treating
some of the hardest jobs that there are out there physically and you know um as some what beneath
people right and it's just I think that's what society's kind of kind of really screwed up and
gotten separated from is that a hard day's good work can be one of the most fulfilling things in
the world some of the happiest communities on the planet are these small farming communities that
don't really have much media and they don't you know they're not caught up in technology and they
just they're happy because they just they know what they're doing every day and they're doing
something that means something and putting food on the table I don't know yeah I think it that
you've made a good point there where you have to make it you have to make it possible to grow
within the scope of that work right like you can't have it be a dead-end job for this person they
have to be able to grow for them to still care about it to want to keep doing it right um I was
also curious about you were talking about people might take advantage of kind of you setting up
these structures where they kind of favor the employee and you want them to be really happy
how has that kind of played out
I got to discover what hiring lawyers was all about which is really fun I remember when I hired
my first lawyer she said congratulations it means you're successful yeah that's a classic it's like
how is that a congratulations yeah dealing with the first you know issue with an employee
that you know was really unfounded however you know you have to protect yourself and the entity
so it's like sort of playing you realize if you hit a certain point you got to protect your brand
and you have to protect your your name and you have to protect the people that still work for you
um it's been very rare though it I would say over 21 years I've maybe faced it with like four or five
people I consider myself incredibly lucky right because I think that overall this job attracts
people that don't that aren't looking to take advantage of a system they they want to enjoy
the people they work with you know because those people exist no matter what career they're in
right there's always one that sneaks through you know they're really good at like talking to you
and making you feel like they you know really care and deep down inside maybe they got hurt as a kid
and never really realized that false scarcity doesn't exist I think it comes from that mentality
if I don't take it no one's going to give it to me yeah it's a zero-sum game yeah and I really feel
bad for those people at heart because that's got to be a hard way to live yeah I mean ultimately
they won't be able to build a fruitful life right because every relationship every business
every thing you do is kind of about giving and then you also get and it's this relationship where
everyone wins yeah and it's a lot of fear you know uh life is full of of fear you know my mentor
used to say that fear and excitement are like a heartbeat away from each other right they're so
close like a roller coaster like you can be really freaked out or scared or really excited those two
live and exist in a really similar place in your nervous system and where your adrenaline pumps
your serotonin levels or dopamine and so when I start finding myself getting fearful I just try to
remind myself I'm like okay yo it's okay like maybe this is exciting maybe I'm gonna learn
something new with this and you know I I won't lie I also enjoy winning I won't lie like I won't
deny the fact that there's something that's also incredibly uh fulfilling when I feel like somebody
might come at my organization or myself personally and I'm able to still be the bigger person and not
turn into like angry or fighting about it but still carefully sort of as they say in gardening weed out
the problem uh in the most delicate way possible and know that around the corner there's gonna be
I mean there's I people always complain about the millennials or even gen z or gen you know what is
the next one alpha is that it yeah alpha I found that there are so many people in those generations
that are incredible and they just need people to kind of meet them where they're at because they
were really sold a big pack of lies and there are going to be god what was it I read something
recently millions and millions of mom and pop companies are going to be closing their doors
over the next couple of years because there's no one there to take over for mom and pop when they
retire yeah nobody wants to do those jobs and they see it and they're like that's a lot of work well
if you love what you do it doesn't feel like a lot of work in the same way and if you have a community
again to just spin it all back around you've got many people to carry that weight then it it tends
to work out you know there's no perfect job yeah yeah like one of my friends was complaining about
kind of entitlement in like our generation and he was like everyone's just getting out of college
and they're like I want to have where's my 100k my lambo and like all my dates where where are they
and so like yeah I think that everyone's kind of looking for this perfect ideal that they're they
were kind of sold but the the actual fulfillment of a job doesn't come from any money or from
having possessions or like going on a lot of dates and having a lot of optionality there
it really just comes from do you enjoy it yeah if you enjoy your job 75% of the time I think you're
doing really well that's kind of what I've noticed 25% of the time yeah we're all going to have that
off day yeah I mean it'd be cool if it was more like 80 20 you know that's sort of the what is
that the like I hate Mondays yeah there's like a t-shirt I hate Mondays I need coffee I need coffee
there's like a t-shirt I hate Mondays I need coffee with Garfield on it you know like old school but
you know I find that honestly uh if you can mostly just find find passion in what you're doing even
if you have to create it I use you think about like a you know a foot doctor right a podiatrist
what does he do all day or she does all day they look at feet yeah they went to how many hours of
medical school to just keep looking at feet all day and their most exciting day is when something's
wrong with your foot yeah it's your worst day is their best day because like oh something exciting
exciting I have a problem to solve now right and so I try to tell that to people it's like man if
you're finding if you're struggling finding any interest in this maybe this is not the right job
for you right uh however like have you thought about learning more about soil or you know you
could learn about bugs you can learn about mold I mean what do you want to learn about yeah shrubs
trees like it's it's endless there's endless information but I think we've been so conditioned
especially for instant gratification and I hate to say it the swipe swipe swipe swipe swipe the doom
scrolling man and so it's I understand it why it can be difficult sometimes to connect to a job so
I'm very hardcore about a no phone policy at my company that's a very good policy also being on
time there are two things that I feel has gotten lost in society that and you can't text if you
have to call on sick because I think if you physically have to call somebody up and be like
I'm not feeling well you know it takes a lot more than just and send yeah like you're sitting in bed
I don't feel too good send out a text yeah it's like common courtesy for the rest of your crew
as well like sometimes you need a day and that makes sense yeah however a lot of times it's
much easier if you could just send it yeah yeah you just add a little bit of friction so that
there's kind of just like a bullshit test yeah in between common courtesy yeah I mean I mean I found
so many people that are amazing it's I that's what I mean by it's a mis misnomer in my in my opinion I
really really think that there is a whole generation of people out there that are searching for more
purpose yeah and not just looking for a paperwork push around job because the more stuff you have I
hate to tell you guys the more stuff you have the more stuff you have to take care of yep like it's
crazy sweeping floors and like the bigger your house the longer it takes to clean it bigger your
lawn my yard looks like shit like now you have to go out there and take care of it yeah totally
and it's like I think that idea of that pursuit of stuff is really empty really honestly it might
fill you up for like a second like oh that was fun I bought something nice but I set a certain
amount of money that I wanted to make and when I hit that cap I put everything else back into the
company I don't want to just keep making more and more money that's my personal prerogative
I don't say that everyone should do it that way but that makes it so I can continuously give
raises to employees like re-funnel that money into the company because what is extra money
gonna get me yeah but having a happy workforce and they're able to afford to go on a vacation or
you know the longer you're at this kind of job and I just yeah again false scarcity I can't say
that enough where do you think false scarcity comes from I think it comes from a generation of people
that were raised by the depression era people right and those were the boomers so then the
boomers came in and they were at an economic boom like it was you know we all know the stats
look up the stats I don't feel like going over stats right now however it's like prices of housing
was cheap education was really cheap and their parents just pushed get as much as you can work
as hard as you can and don't like even throw that little bit of coffee out you know like save
everything like hide it under the mattress and it was this feeling of like you don't know when
you could end up with nothing so make sure to save everything and make sure to get as much as you can
and score a little way in a big pile and I honestly feel bad for boomers because I think they missed
out on a lot of just experiences of just enjoying you know and not just becoming the massive
capitalistic game that they've kind of created and complain about I'm not it's not all boomers
please please remember I'm not calling anybody out in specific but then along came gen x and we were
like the forgotten feral generation you know it's like the parents both parents were working like
crazy earning earning earning and we were like eating tv dinners and honestly like I know it's
sound it's really like we joke because we're the forgotten generation and recently it's been picked
up on a little bit but we learned how to play the game but we knew the game was bullshit yeah so like
now you've got the next generation down right because the millennials are now like shit like
I don't even want to learn the game yeah like this is total crap yeah how did you guys get
convinced into this you know and so you know I think that there's a massive sea change happening
right now and I do think that the trades are going to be a massive industry that people
uh are are slowly really figuring out and flocking to I mean I have so many college
educated people working for me that are making more doing this job than they would in their
field of work that they got a degree for right and something really off about that so I can't
change that what I can do is I can change the way my own company functions so that people can afford
to live yeah you can at least create a small change in your community even and that has
cascading effects if other people are like oh this is awesome they start their own company they take
inspiration from you and then this continues to grow and I think that you're right that
this kind of labor and working in trades is kind of going to go through a resurgence just because
I think gen z is coming into the time where they're like it's all a lot like they don't even want to
participate at whatsoever right and they're kind of like what what even is there and a lot of them
really feel like they have no meaning or no purpose and so I think that will kind of rebirth this
this working in at something that actually shows something right away right yeah absolutely I hate
to use the word renaissance but I'm hopeful yeah I kind of hope I'm like maybe there's a new
renaissance coming where people value things like art and creative things like I have a lot of artists
and musicians and chefs that work for me because it actually really does go hand in hand because
you have to have an aesthetic eye a lot of times and you can kind of know whether you're a musician
or an artist or something like that when something just looks wrong you might not know why it looks
wrong but as long as you're curious and you ask somebody else in the chain and if that person
doesn't know the other person will go find someone else that might know so again that curiosity bit
that I started with I'm just going to like circle that all the way back to the beginning again just
keep staying curious and instead of I'll tell people like instead of doom scrolling on whatever
you doom scroll on I'm not going to name any platforms maybe get on the CSU extension and
look on plant talk and see you know the life cycle of you know mycelium yeah I don't know read that
yeah it might be interesting you might actually go wow that's really cool or get a book on shacks
I bought this book about like shacks and shanties like how to build shacks and shanties cheese you
know why not you know yeah it's like we we have more information than we've ever had before and
information we're being fed is as empty as it's ever been yeah we're using it all wrong and it's
causing people all sorts of depression and mental health issues and so I think when you immediately
get somebody in this line of work you get them outside you get them working and sweating you
know their brain can't really function on some of those things you really do become a lot more
instinctual yeah yeah you've said you that you throughout your journey you've kind of had issues
with getting lost within the weeds like well what is it finding missing the forest for the trees
what do you mean by that because I think that a lot of people I was actually talking with my
friend about this who was like a very high achiever and he's going to become a doctor
and he's like down that path and it's like a 10-year long path right and he's very fixated on this
goal and I was kind of just asking him questions about like what happens like do you do you feel
like you're kind of waiting on this one goal and kind of just like missing life go by as
as you go towards it and like we kind of debated about this kind of topic so I'm curious to see what
you have to say about like being super fixated on a goal versus actually appreciating where you're at
yeah it that is a daily practice right because I think there was a whole time period that went by
in my life where I realized with my children for instance I joke with them that they're gonna have
therapy sessions around this someday you know and in spring we get so busy but it was so important
that I needed to be involved and this was a few years ago then when I realized I had missed one
of my children's sixth grade graduation ceremonies for work right yeah can't go back can't fix that
it was an important thing that I had to take care of and they didn't understand that right so
especially when you look at it through the eyes of a child however it's important for the child to
see though that their parent their mom is working very hard to also make sure that you also don't
want to teach children that they're the most important thing on the planet however a sixth
grade graduation that was too far right so I'm using that as an example and going oh my god I
need to make time to go camping this year with them uh you know um and not just let that time
pass and it's it's easy to get caught up and work and just keep striving for that and then forget
about the the important things like making time to sit down and eat a meal together you know with
friends even if you're a single person just with friends or family members or you know most most
people that are entrepreneurs I think the number is like 40 percent of all entrepreneurs deal with
severe mental health issues like depression and anxiety right and I think it's because they're
not taking time to take care of themselves right yeah because it feels like guilty pleasure to do
that like oh I'm just gonna binge watch a show today you know and then you're like oh if I should
have called all those people back and I could have built a bigger crew and I could have you know had
more money so I could pay more money to others it's just so at some point you just have to check
where you're at and go am I making sure to make time for the things that are important that have
nothing to do with my job or else you end up at your job feeling empty as well so over 21 years
I've had highs and lows for sure and um I've definitely harmed some relationships in my life
that I mean then again I was 23 when I started my company yeah and so if I knew what I knew then
what I know now maybe things would have gone a little bit differently however yeah it's part of
the pitfall of I think any job but you know yeah I think I don't know if that answered that.
A lot of high achievers be they entrepreneurs or in the corporate world or whatever it may be
become their own slave masters in some ways where it's like they sit around and they want to go do
this thing but in their head they have this ambient anxiety about like oh I could do more I could do
this I could do this like I'm not working harder I'm not doing this and yeah I know plenty of
entrepreneurs who just kind of only work all the time. It's a bit of a mindset too because when you
find yourself slowing down you know I mean I was from a generation where we didn't get diagnosed
on everything that we've got going on. I mean all three of my kids have been a therapy already right
my you know my mom's like a counselor so I did still have therapy don't get me wrong uh however
you know recently somebody said I think you're a high functioning ADD ADHD or I always joked that I
had the H but maybe not the ADD and I definitely had the OCD so part of that kind of because that
makes your mind just hyper focus on this thing and it you work it all you work the puzzle all the
way through until it's complete you can't leave it alone it's like just let me just move this cup a
little bit to the left okay okay now it's good now I can go. So there's a part of you that gets joy
and inspiration from that I don't think it's a negative thing you learn to work within your
personality type so if you're looking to run a business just make sure again you pick something
that you genuinely love to do and you're not picking it for the money because you really are
excited when you're done at the end of the day about like yeah like whether you're a restaurateur
and you just love making the perfect dish and you see somebody enjoy that dish and that means the
world to you or you know again I mean there's just so many jobs out there and so many different
fields of work but small businesses are in trouble right now in this country and I'm really nervous
to see a world where small businesses start to go away more and more because man then it used to be
the engine of the economy and it's a lot more freedom responsibility equals freedom people
it's true it's one that you got to chew on for a while however know when to pull the brakes and
take time to just go camping with your kids or your friends the whole world's not going to
crumple if you disappear for a minute or else you're also doing a really bad job running your company
I've always said that too if you can't leave the company for a day yeah then you've just done a
horrible job training people yeah exactly yeah which again comes right back around at the beginning
it's like teaching people what you know and not being fearful that they're going to take it and
steal it from you they can't steal from you what you are they could steal clients but you don't
work with those jerks anyway they're the kind of person that's going to jump ship to take some of
your ex employees which has happened it's just not that you don't want to work with those people
either and then there's always another job right around the corner it always happens that way I
have a motto in the company and I don't know if it's something that and what do you call it we
always say it always works out it always works out like I don't know if that's like the placebo
effect I don't know if that's the right way of explaining it but it's just saying it's always
work out it's always going to work out it always works out this person leaves there's always another
person here this client leaves there's always a new client over here and it just does and I don't
know if that's what is that magical thinking what would you call that but you know what I'm saying
like you're putting it out there yeah as like this is just what it is and it just seems to kind of
work as an oh god everything's gonna go to shit you know and those people if you've noticed a lot
of times things go to shit for them all the time so attraction what is that the law of attraction
right yeah without getting too hippy-dippy about it but just seriously where you put your energy
so if you're like it's always gonna work out yeah I think that's it's also the letting go of your
control over the situation if you think it's gonna work out you'll let it go where it does
as opposed to like trying to rein it back in and like kind of putting your hands into what the
world's gonna do right yeah that is perfectly spoken actually I'm gonna steal that
seriously it really is that simple yeah and I really like this conversation about responsibility
I was at a philosophy night yesterday with one of my friends and one of the questions we talked
about was kind of what is maturity and then the person I was talking to was like oh it's
about responsibility it's about taking ownership but I added kind of an addendum to it which was
like but it's also keeping this enthusiasm and joyfulness while saying yes to everything
it's not just the responsibility because you get lost in that you are the workhorse you are the
one person who's like I have this to do I have that to do I have all these things I need to get
done and you'll get a lot done but will you have fun while doing it yeah yeah and again that's
not a way to live really it's not a sustaining way to live stress is the biggest killer oh yeah
especially in a corporate grinding American culture yeah our our country's definitely got
a couple things kind of wrong with it in terms of what they have prioritized I mean food used to be
back you know the 50s and 40s 50s or whatever like a quarter of your budget right yeah that
is not the case anymore they made food so dirt cheap so people stopped appreciating what it took
to get that food to the table right that is it's bad yeah it's bad and so appreciating you know
whatever job that is I don't know where I'm going with this but again 50% of all nurseries
in the country have closed over the last decade I didn't know that yeah it's really scary they
can't get the labor force to do it they can't convince their next generation of children to
take it on or get people to buy it because it's a really hard job and so we're gonna start having
shortages of plant materials you know during COVID I had clients that were offering me
crazy sums of money to get their hands on a specific plant and I said they just don't exist
they don't exist yeah these big tall evergreens take 20 years to get that big you might as well
buy the eight foot one because by the time they have ones available that one's going to be that
height because that's where everything was because they had to turn over all these crops back in 2008
when the recession hit and it's just this chain reaction it was all across North America I mean
we're talking Canada Mexico Central America like nowhere you could find certain large-scale
certain large-scale plant material things so it was kind of funny though too in a way because
say to a really rich person like I don't care how much money you have you can't buy it
yeah it's just not not existing anymore because I think the the commoditization of a lot of things
kind of takes away the appreciation for it like I can uber eats food to my house
do you really appreciate what it took to get that food or is it just a click on your button
on your phone yeah and yeah it's just to get the disconnection from what's important I always say
being human really digging into the human experience has been the the greatest gift that
I've given myself which is you know plants animals music uh children you know friendship
nature all of that like the things that are very human are just so important to enjoy while you're
here you know just stuff is not you know stuff's not that important really at the end of the day
nobody puts on their graves son I wish I would have worked harder yeah yeah right yeah so maybe
just an adjustment of how much you really need right um yeah I I caution and I caution anybody
going into business to make sure that you're not doing it for the money that that should not be your
first that should never be the first line on reasons to do this well yeah nobody wishes they
had more money when they die no that's useless um you said you grew up in a chaotic and unhealthy
kind of family how did that impact your upbringing and then what you ended up doing is your career
and what was it what was it kind of like to grow up in the family well yeah I like I went to
11 different schools growing up and lived in eight states in two countries 35 houses by the time I
was 21 years old and I always just sort of felt like nothing was ever solid or stable
which is I think why I got really into this idea of building this company in a way to make it so
solid and stable that it was something I could count on and rely on and it was in my hands it
and it was in my hands it wasn't out of my control so when you grow up feeling like you have no
control over these things and you brought up the control thing earlier and it is true sometimes
so it's kind of a mind screw because on one hand I had to learn to be really good at it like okay no
we're gonna do it this way and I know it's gonna work however you have to like on the flip side
let it go sometimes and release that control and just sort of like let your hands open up and go
okay whatever's gonna happen is gonna happen so uh yeah and I think there was also a feeling of
working harder than I needed to work in order to prove myself because I didn't have a degree or
you know that imposter syndrome thing again right so not getting you know a lot of therapy really
helped but honestly just I think just learning that um somebody said to me recently they wish
they had had my childhood I was trying to figure out they said I think my parents hugged me too
much and my head just got a spun I'm like what are you talking about like seriously what do you
mean you got hugged too much and told that you were great like I just got lazy like if I had to
have your chaotic crazy childhood you know living on your own at 15 already like cooking for yourself
and working and figuring stuff out you know I mean I was still in high school the first little bit
until they kicked me out uh but that's why I was like I'm not gonna go to my 12th school at this
point so I was like I'm out why'd they kick you out uh for immunizations that's what they said
they didn't want me there they didn't they didn't like me too they didn't like the idea that I was
living on myself like on my own honestly and I was getting okay grades but they were the number one
high school in Toronto and I think they thought I was bringing their their stats down and there was
just one teacher that really just didn't like me and so they told me I couldn't come back to school
until I got my immunizations and it said I had 10 days on I was like so I was like oh I'm gonna take
at least one or two days to screw around by d3 they're like uh Sarah didn't come back to school
so they called my mom and my mom's like they said that you stopped coming to school and so they
kicked you out because you're 16 now so they don't need to keep you there and it was a month before
school was out too so and so I was gonna lose all those credits for my 11th grade year and I just
was like no and I can't start over again if I'm going to be in charge I wanted to be in charge
of myself at that point I thought that I could do a better job than these parents were doing
than these adults these so-called adults in the room I said I think I got this and so yeah I had
a really really strong work ethic and just knew that I would never be beholden to anybody or be
under somebody else's rule yeah it's weird yeah and so I understood what my friend was saying on
one hand right that they wish that they had had that motivator and on another hand you know the
anxiety and the depression I could live without yeah I think the problem is you you had a lot of
fuel but it wasn't sustainable fuel right yeah like you had things you were running from things
you were trying to get to and it was this whole thing where it's kind of survival right yeah like
and it works and it works it works to get to become successful to do the things but at the
end of the day probably caused you a lot of pain and suffering throughout that entire time oh yeah
you cannot live on adrenaline like that it's really bad for your physical system it's really
bad for your mental system so yeah I had to then rely on a community of people and get better at
trusting the people around me and saying please help like there's a really cool thing that I've
built here and I think if we all kind of chip in we all could end up living a pretty good life by
taking care of this so I always say that native earth isn't me it's everyone right and I think
that's what my saving grace was but it took me having three kids I think to to break me
in terms of like I can't do this anymore on my own like I have to spread out all these responsibilities
so you know the job that I used to do now it takes four people to do my job yeah and I still
do parts of the job right I'm still doing like R&D and development and all that stuff but you know
I look back and I'm I don't I don't know how sometimes I did it so I don't recommend
you know killing yourself over doing a business but there is going to be hard times there are
going to be 60 70 hour weeks sometimes and that's okay yeah just don't let it go too long if your
body starts screaming at you yeah you know yeah don't make them a thing that's always there
yeah exactly and that takes relying on your community you know yeah relying on other people
that you've trained you've taught them yeah you've done all of that to bring it full for full
circle yeah because I again people have gotten more and more separated out and this job is so
great because everybody's so interactive you know they just have time to sort of hang out and talk
and they're doing work and it's like a lot of that's a lot of smaller companies so yeah I
could get spun out on this for way too long why were you living on your own at 15
because I went through a year of high school oh god if I'm being really honest um
so when I was in high school I well I had originally lived with my dad and my stepmom for a while
and my stepmom was really abusive uh like a really severe alcoholic and physically and mentally
abusive and I kind of hid it for a long time but eventually I couldn't hide it anymore
and my grades were so bad and the school was so confused so they made me take all the specialized
testing to find out if I was like needed to be in you know the special education system
to be in you know the special um what do they call it now my sister's special education teacher
right special ed and so when they tested me they saw that I was like three grade levels ahead of
everything and so then they were like something's going wrong at home and so that snowballed and
opened up the whole thing so I eventually then ended up in Canada with my mom but I was so broken
at that point even though my home life was a lot more stable the the damage had been done right
at that point so I would sit in the bathroom instead of go to class I just like sit with my
feet up on the toilet and eventually they figured out they're like how did you have 88 absences
where were you it's Canada you can't go outside it's freezing out I get in the bathroom by like
the you know the shop class at the way end of the school that you know nobody you ever went to
and my mom's like wow this is not working for you you need to find something that's going to work
for you you know your grades are horrific and she found this art school in Toronto um and pretty
much just brought me there at 15 and they had done the auditions the year before and they were like
we're not going to audition anybody new and she's like no you just have to hear her sing and I sang
and they're like okay we'll let you in the school um so I started off on a really unsettled foot on
that one and then yeah I was renting little apartments and taking two subways and two buses
you know an hour and a half commute each direction to get to high school I thought I was doing great
that's why I was really pissed when they expelled me it's like I got a c average it's really great
for me yeah but yeah and then at that point I decided I just I didn't want to live with
parents anymore and so you know I moved to New York City uh for a while and then I moved to
San Francisco and you know checked out the two coasts and yeah it's a long complicated story but
I found Colorado which was amazing and there's something about this state that I don't know what
it is I love to travel still I travel all the time it's like it keeps me from trying to move
all the time yeah if you actually go out and see the world yeah yeah I'm going to Turkey in just
a couple of weeks so I've heard great things about yeah I went to Egypt last year and I'm trying to
do again self-care right so it's like making sure to do those things um but yeah it you know I
I say this because you know I don't want to throw anybody under the bus in my life either
you know it's always one of those delicate subjects but my parents thought that I was
smart enough to be able to take care of myself and in some respects they were right but in a
lot of respects they were wrong because I have now a 16 year old child she's going to be 16 in a few
weeks and I look at her and I go I was that age yeah oh my fucking god sorry I look at her I'm
like dude you could barely keep your room clean how would you survive out there so I kept thinking
that you know my sister always says that we were raised as feral children you know we were the
feral generation so I think I was just given a lot of tools at a very young age on how to manage
high stress situations so I think it grew my instincts so that I got really good at seeing
people and reading people and knowing when things were safe or not safe so it made me a little bit
of a control freak too however I'm working on that right now by necessity it sounds like right it was
literally out of necessity so lemons lemonade you know it's like I might as well use this brain that
developed in a way to see the whole spider web of various ways that the world could go and get over
my imposter syndrome and go for it yeah it's a very entrepreneurial thing to do yeah take what
you have and make something of it and then make sure to get good people around you trust them you
know it's that's that's it you can't do it by yourself you cannot yeah do you still talk to
your parents uh-huh yeah my mom lives six minutes from here oh that's awesome she moved here to be
close to me and my sister moved here too my father no no no no the last time I talked to him I think
he finished it was for father's day and I don't even know what happened it was pretty funny like
something about politics never talked politics I don't know he just was like fuck you sir and hung
up the phone like hello hello dad you still there and so and that was the last conversation
I had one other I found out from my other sister that he had a heart condition hole in his heart
and so I found out through Facebook so I thought I'd reach out to him at least once to be like
are you dead man are you dying I was like I used to love you you know I don't really want to talk to
you but you are still my dad and he was all sheepish like oh it's really nice to you to check in
again part of that generation man they got really the boomers I don't know what happened to a bunch
of them they got they got really injured so I hold no grudges forgiveness comes for yourself I know
everybody's heard that but it's it's true it is so true you don't forgive for that other person you
do it so that you can move on because those things will keep you making decisions based upon scenarios
that are no longer real you know so and good therapy yeah uh find good therapists too not bad
therapists if they start talking about themselves in therapy you run yeah they're just using you as
a therapist one of the traditions we have on the podcast is kind of coming to the end of the episode
is the guest will make a small carrot for themselves is what we call it that is a two-week
challenge that encourages them to live more bravely more fearlessly that they could accomplish within
two weeks and so my question to you is what do you think would be a good challenge for you to
live more more bravely oh my gosh I think I know this one so a friend pointed this out to me recently
so I'm going through a pretty big transition in my life right now and I I've been told I can beat
a dead horse like I kind of get wrapped up in thinking I can solve some things so I think it
more has to do with uh saying really nice things and about myself I know that sounds weird but it's
really hard for me to do that I don't even really own a full-length mirror you know yeah I know that
sounds weird but looking in the mirror and just being like you know the Stuart Smalley like you're
good enough you're smart enough and gosh darn it people like you um I think the carrot would be just
gentle to myself because it's been really rough the last couple of weeks but that feels like such
a big broad thing to say how are you how am I gonna know that I did that I guess I would just
catch myself being hard on myself it might be being mindful being mindful like catching
catching the moments where you're harsh on yourself and maybe like take a note on your phone
like well like that oh I was being mean to myself and that's it that's the whole thing
yeah it's incredible how we talk to ourselves being mindful of then how I'm talking to myself
that I think that's a better way of putting it thank you yeah mindfulness of how I'm talking
to myself yeah even if I say something mean I just have to write it down I mean like yeah
I said something mean I said something mean today yeah it's okay yeah I think that would be a really
good challenge to do one of the other things that we do is you also attach a carrot or no a stick
which is the accountability portion which is kind of something that you don't want to happen that if
you go these next two weeks and you're not really able to do that then you might have to do something
hard or you might have to like I don't know do a really hard workout do a cold plunge do something
that is on something you don't want to do oh uh I hate hiking up mountains manatee incline yeah
for some reason my dad bought us on death marches in the desert as kids so I love river walks me okay
yeah I could do that because I love to be I love exercise but okay if I can't do that then I have
to go maybe a hike up mount sinitas and boulder yeah because it's an easy one but it's still an
incline yeah it's doable set a doable goal but yes my friend hikes are like every week too she's
always asking me to go come walk with me I'm like no yeah I love hiking I actually do really enjoy
it I like hiking you know like on a flat surface yeah I don't know it's so I don't think we would
call that hiking right it's like childhood trauma right you don't realize how it really affects you
over some really dumb stuff because I was so little and everybody was so much older than me
my dad would bring us into the desert walking through cactus up mountains and the caves and
stuff and they always said that I would like I could walk two miles by the time I was two years
old without anybody picking me up so there was almost this like they took the joy out of it
that leaves no more fun no I could walk for hours and hours along a river and bushwhack I love
bushwhacking that's fun yeah but yeah all right I can I can do that sounds good I can do all right
well thank you for coming on it's been great talking to you yeah thank you for having people
find out about you get in contact with you if you're interested in that uh I guess my website
nativeearthco.com it's nice and simple yeah I'll link it when we post this up yeah we have a there's
a button on there to contact um yeah if anybody I mean I'm looking I've been mentoring people
again recently too I think passing it along uh was something that I've been wanting to do so I was
trained by other amazing people and you know I've been looking to take on the next generation of
people other than just my you know people that work for me yeah right yeah so if you're interested
in finding a mentor in horticulture doing some gardening or not even me I know a lot of really
cool mentors too reach out to Sarah yeah awesome thank you thank you