by Susan Harris
San Francisco-area garden designer Michelle Derviss saw my announcement of this blog on GardenRant and wrote a comment SO chockful of helpful info, I'm repeating it here:
I just went to one of your links and read Jack"s home page . In it he describes what he will do for you as a garden coach. I never thought of myself as a garden coach but from his descriptive outline of what a garden coach will do for you , I have just learned that I have been a garden coach for the past 25 plus years. My term for that type of service has been 'horticultural consultant'.
To address some of your questions above, based on my past experience :
- What's the ultimate income-earning potential of coaching ? - - - In a good year and in a good affluent community it can be 55 to 65 K a year . I also offer landscape design services so I am guesstimating out design services and including only horticultural consultation.
- Time commitment ? - - - full time all the time if you really want it. I have always found as much work as I wanted and more than I needed in this field.
- "How about talking to those local nurseries about distributing your business cards or posting your flyer?" - - - err, umm, .. in my experience any good nursery that has half a buisness brain already offers garden consultation services so this may be a loss leader. That 'may' be one market area to tap but I think one would do better by putting yourself out front and center in your community by offering short hort classes thru your local garden clubs and community centers, writing hort advice for the local paper, doing a high profile pro bono project and then market the crap out of it and encouraging your growing clientele to spread the word via personal referrals.
- A web presence is somewhat important in this day and age especially if you have taken the route to use the local print media to spread the word.
AND MORE GOOD IDEAS FROM MICHELLE
In an expansive mood on the subject, she then blogged about it herself right here on her own blog, provocatively entitled Garden Porn.
