Explore Jessica Robison's journey in the Coaching Industry

It’s funny, in the gardening world the world it has one connotation but in the business world it had a different one. For me, it means starting a journey from a non-traditional place. I didn’t have a family that gardened, we didn’t even own a lawnmower. I have friends in similar industries who had gardens growing up or grew up farming and that’s not where I come from. I grew up in the suburbs, we had dead grass all around. I love my parents and I am proud of my upbringing but gardening wasn’t a part of my childhood. I am very rooted in the fact that my grandparents are holocaust survivors. They came from Poland and sought refuge here in the U.S during World War 2. They started a business from nothing. My grandfather started out as a janitor in a synagogue and ended up owning some small clothing stores. I think that’s where I get my grit from. My grandmother always used to say “No grit, No pearl”. They went through so much to get to where they were. I always think about that whenever I think something’s hard. I say to myself that I’m not in a Siberian refugee camp, I’m not in a foreign country whose language I don’t speak. It may seem hard to me but it’s a lot harder for a lot of people out there. You just have to keep plugging away. – Jessica Robison

I work in the tech industry. I am a user experience designer/web designer. I work on complex applications deciding how a user’s going to move through and how it’s going to look like. I took a year off after my youngest was born and worked as a web consultant and did some branding and web design. I have a Fine Arts and Graphic Design degree. That’s where I’ve been working for the past twelve to fifteen years. – Jessica Robison

My passion started to show in college. I went to a Fine Arts school, we had our General Education courses, but they were art school versions of the Gen Eds. I was able to take Scientific Illustration, Plant Morphology, Plant Illustration and sort of stay in that realm. I took three classes of Botanical Garden where I would learn about the plants, what to make sure to emphasize when you’re drawing them, and how plants are different. That really ignited my interest in that world. Then, we bought a foreclosure in 2009. We looked at it one night and decided to take it. We were young and pretty broke and we had enough money for about 5% down payment. It was the only house in the market in our price range. When we went back after we had put our deposit in, we found out that the whole yard was blacked up from the front to the back. However, we decided to do something to fix it. So, that next summer we picked axes in a dumpster, removed all the black and were left with a completely blank canvas. We had no money to hire a landscape architect, I could only order some books online and read about it. That winter, my mother in law, who is a gardener, gave me a book called “Edible Landscaping”. I read it and I got obsessed. That really changed the way I looked at planning a landscape and that was my pilot. I tried to bring some edibles into a landscape that would traditionally boxwoods, hydrangeas, etc. That’s what started it. From there, I become obsessed. Every day I commuted to Boston, I was listening to gardening podcasts and at night I was watching YouTube videos about gardening. – Jessica Robison

Yeah, I think you have to fail a lot, especially with gardening. You have to fail a lot in order to understand what went wrong. If everything goes right, you won’t understand why it did but you really learn when things go wrong. For example, putting a planter on a black top surface will make it too hot for the plant and cause it to dry out. However, you don’t really understand that until you’ve done it. You have to understand why the plant on the driveway did badly but the other one on the lawn did so great? People fail once and think they can’t garden. That’s just not true. With practice, every black or brown thumb can turn green, it just takes a lot of dead plants to learn. – Jessica Robison

Once you understand what it takes to establish a garden, it all starts to make sense. I’ve also noticed that my design background comes handy when I’m designing for other people, especially with user experience. I understand the experience people need to have with the garden, what challenges they have, what they’re looking to get out of the garden, the landscape too. After taking these factors into consideration, you also need to think of contractors coming in. you have to be looking at it both from a human centered design and an ecological design perspective. Once you have a system down and understand it is repeatable or somewhat repeatable, then you’ll realize the possible business opportunity that lies there. – Jessica Robison

A while ago, I did some research on Facebook which is a great resource. I asked people “If you don’t garden, why don’t you garden?” I had hundreds of responses. I looked at them and thought some of these people can definitely be gardeners but have something on the way. One of the things I noticed is that there are landscapers, garden centers and there is nothing in between.  A landscaper just puts something in your yard and leaves. You end up not really knowing what they put in, nor how to maintain it. That was one of the things I talked with my cousin that hired an edible landscaper. She said they just put stuff in and then they left. She had no idea what they did and how to take care of it. That’s where the coaching comes in. I work with my clients, I do consulting instead of just planting and leaving. Most of the time they’re in the garden with me as I’m planning their garden and I show them the plant and how they should plant it. My point is, I don’t want clients forever. I want them for a few seasons and I want them to eventually understand how to take care of it themselves. I would want it to be something they learn and teach others maybe. – Jessica Robison

I work with different clients and they ask for different services. I have a small demand for landscaping in general. I don’t work on foundation planting unless my clients want to incorporate edibles in there. So, just focusing on regenerative and edible landscaping really helps me hone in who I would work with. For the most part, I have kind of chewed different styles of coaching. I usually help people get the garden started themselves. There are some people I help by showing where they’re going to get their beds and they go and get it on their own. I’m there as an expert to give them advice which is awesome. I had a client that thanked me for saving her from a year of research and hundreds of dollars and wasted materials. I have people who want to turn key gardens and I come in, we plan out the garden together and I go to install the beds and fill them. Afterwards, they come out to help plant the garden and I come in to do maintenance but they’re usually there for it or we talk at the end about what I did. By narrowing my focus, I feel like that helped kind of weed out a lot of people. People ask me if I can do their foundation planting and I tell them that’s not what I do. I do small orchards, edible gardens, and polymer habitats. That’s helped me focus because then I don’t feel like I need to learn skillsets I’m not particularly interested in. I also think it goes against my mission. That’s one of the things I’m constantly measuring. If I do something, I ask myself if it follows my brand or mission or does it go against it. Every material I bring in, every time I do a pop-up event I’m really conscious if there’s any unused plastic, whether people are going to use this because I don’t want things to be wasted. So, having those core values that you can measure decisions against, really helps. – Jessica Robison

You do. I have a small policy and it works like this: if I’m doing a larger order I’m usually bringing in the contractor and they’re the ones who hold the larger insurance. I have a contract too. If I’m installing twelve beds, I’m not doing that myself, I’ll bring in a general contractor to do it and they’re the ones who handle the majority of the liability. It’s a $500/per year policy because my business is a start-up. What was really helpful for me was getting a financial planner. It’s an independent one, they don’t work with a specific company. We pay them a percentage of our assets and in exchange they manage our portfolio. When I sat down with them and told them I wanted to start this business, they helped me understand what I needed. – Jessica Robison

No, you don’t need a license for gardening. However, you’ll need an MLP (master of landscaping professional) for landscaping. Because I am a garden coach and not a landscaper, I don’t really need a license. There’s a difference. I’m not mowing lawns etc., I don’t need heavy equipment. – Jessica Robison

It’s actually something I think about because I don’t service just Acton. It really started out as a blog for my home garden and then it grew from there. So, Acton Food Forest was my yard that I was changing from a traditional landscape into a food forest which is a style of gardening where you’re mimicking the layers of a forest. Now I am serving a lot wider so I have one client in Acton, but the majority are in suburban Wayland, Dover, Oliver and a couple other places. People know me more than they know Acton food Forest. It is funny when people don’t recognize me and ask if I’m Acton Food Forest. If I had to change the name, it would have to be a slow evolution. I’ll always keep Food Forest in my name. I don’t know if I’ll keep Acton in my name because I’m constantly looking at farms for sale and maybe one day I’ll be in Harvard or Leominster but the food forest is definitely in the heart of what I do. – Jessica Robison

I’m a very visual person and gardening in general is a very visual art so Instagram felt like a natural fit. I post a little bit on Facebook and I’ve gotten some traction there. I do more with Facebook groups, I belong in many groups about gardening but that’s the extent of it. I don’t use Twitter because I just don’t think it makes sense for my business. On Instagram, you can upload videos, people can talk to me. I don’t like to be too feisty with my content so YouTube always felt like it needed to be produced. I think at some point I will get there but right now I am happy to be shooting on my SLR or camera. The garden is so dynamic. For example: if I see a pest, I want to document it and teach people how to get rid of it in an organic way. I am probably not going to have time to set up the lights, get everything ready in place. It’s better if it’s just me and my phone or camera. – Jessica Robison

So, I take my time commitment into consideration because that’s what people are essentially buying. Anybody can go out and move some dirt. I look at the design of the garden and implanting it and I pay myself an hourly rate that makes sense for me. On products, I try to make a little bit but not much. It’s hard because at the root of it, I want people gardening and I don’t want a price people think is beyond my services. It is expensive to start a formal kitchen garden, it’s not cheap. That’s why I give my advice for free occasionally. On Instagram I give content when I see the need. I had a mother come to me who was undergoing cancer treatment and wanted some advice about her garden and I offered to do it for free. If the garden is going to give you some comfort, please let me do this for you. I make sure to pay myself for my time when I’m doing consults and design. I have also understood from freelancing that the hour in the garden with the client is not an hour of work. I have to commute there, pick the materials beforehand and spend time on the design. Every client walks away with a crop map and materials on how to take care of them so that kind of gets rolled into the price. – Jessica Robison

That’s something I am working on. I actually just joined a six week training starting in January with a business coach to better understand how to scale. I do know I’m going to need people to help with maintenance and installation and I want to make sure that my time is still being used for things that make the business uniquely mine. When it comes to customers, I want to make sure I am the one they are talking to about what the needs of the garden. So, even if I have someone else design the garden for me, I can give my input about what I think the crucial pieces are. That’s how I look at it. I just want to be sure the people I will bring on are just as passionate about my mission. I think it’s the perfect job for a kid that’s in college because it’s seasonal. When I think about it, I want to make sure these are people that believe in what I believe in, are proud of the work they’re doing and aren’t just trying to have a summer job. When I think about my ideal employee, they are Biology students and they’re looking for something to get their hands dirty and help further sustainable and regenerative gardening or something similar. That’s who I have in mind about who I want to hire but I just haven’t hired that person yet. – Jessica Robison

So, I had my garden and that was my portfolio. I am really fortunate that I have an acre of land to play on. I have part of my garden dedicated to sort of being that showcase garden that I can photograph. It feeds my family as well but it illustrates the principles that I want others to be able to use when I’m planning gardens. I have other spots in the yard that are not photo-ready yet but have a purpose. My open compost and other stuff are not Instagram-worthy but they’re there. So, I started with my own and then people got interested. I had one or two customers that were willing to take that leap of faith knowing I had just done my garden and it felt great. They are still my favorite clients. I had clients that wanted to do it themselves but wanted help getting started. They had a really unique background. The husband is a mixed media artist and sculptor so he had the skills to get started, he just didn’t know how to grow food and that’s where I came in. – Jessica Robison

I think there’s a ton of great content out there for learning to garden. Joe Gardener is a good one, he has a PBS show “Growing a greener world”. Instagram is filled with different gardeners with different styles and flavors. There are advanced gardeners looking to up your skills or help you understand how to monetize gardening. If you’re just beginning, have never gardened and want to learn, there’s tons of resources for that. There’s a bunch but I would suggest starting with Joe Gardener, he’s one my favorites. There’s an actual gardening consulting coaching business called Gardenary. That whole business is getting people started as garden coaches. For a long time, we had gotten separated from our source of food and I think the pandemic really brought that out. People understood the importance of home-grown food when they went to the stores and the shelves were empty. Our food system is pretty fragile and there’s certain things you can do to prepare for bad days. I enjoy the fact that whenever there is a romaine recall, I don’t buy romaine because I grow romaine. I get a little kick out of every item I see in the grocery store I don’t need to buy. That’s where it all started. I wanted to have my own apples, I now have my own eggs. – Jessica Robison

Firstly, I am a big fan of accessibility so make sure whatever branding choices you’re making are legible. You have to be thinking about people who may be colorblind so make sure there is enough contrast. Make sure your brand feels genuine to you because there’ll be people trying to copy you but they won’t be able to, even if they try because they just aren’t you. That’s one thing to keep in mind. It’s important to understand why you made certain decisions in the first place. Even if they need to evolve, make sure you’re still mapping to those core missions. I have a background in graphic design and that helps me tremendously. I don’t think everybody has to hire a graphic designer and spend $3,000 on the website or more. I think you can get started with just an Instagram account, a Facebook page, an email address and eventually work on it from there. Eventually, you’ll get to a place where you will need branding. If you have a friend of a friend who wants to start a garden, you should be there to help them. Don’t let the fact that you don’t have a business card get in the way. You can always write it down on a piece of paper. It is nicer and neater to have a business card but don’t let that stop you if you already have people asking for your services. I think it is important to really think about what matters and the other stuff can come later. When I was freelancing as a web designer I have told people they didn’t need my services, they didn’t need a custom website. – Jessica Robison

I think it’s a combination of both. I think growing my Instagram following was a big help because it helped my credibility. I don’t like to think I’m an influencer by any means but I have people already learning from me. I also think, the more clients, the more happy clients you have and that helps your credibility. I always keep it in mind that happy clients are the ones who are going to tell their friends. In any kind of business, referrals are the best way to generate more clients. You don’t need a lot of them, just a few that are singing your praises. – Jessica Robison

It depends. I think that because I am running this on the side, I have to limit the amount of clients that I have. I have a friend who lives on the north shore and started gardening with me. We both had a baby business around the same time and instead of being pushed outside of the nest, 2020 came, everybody wanted to garden and we were skyrocketed to the moon. I looked at my calendar one day and I had three installs in one weekend and no time for my family. I can only grow at the amount I can sustain it for now. Once I have a working model, I want to learn how to scale it, I don’t know if that’s the best way to do it. If you talk to tech entrepreneurs, one of the first things they think about is scalability. I know that this is scalable, I just haven’t worked on those mechanisms to make it scalable. For now I am doing what my life allows for a happy work-family life balance. Gardens are dynamic. Whenever something happens to my garden, it’s happening to all of my clients’ gardens. I immediately text them, tell them what to do about the issues. I have a limited number of clients so I can still work one-on-one with them but eventually I’m going to need a newsletter that talks about possible issues that may come up in the gardens. So, I do understand that on-on-one for each individual client is going to be less and less as time goes on but I want to make sure they’re still feeling like they’re getting that individual attention. – Jessica Robison

I think a lot goes back to my grandparents, saying to myself that everybody has bad days and I need to get it done and lastly, protecting my time. I think those are the things I always go back to. I’d also include confidence. One of the things I learned is that people are hiring you because you are an expert on the field and I’ve learned that everybody has doubt or has Imposter Syndrome. As an artist, it’s only natural for you to have the Imposter Syndrome. That’s what drives you to be better, be more creative, research more and work harder. If you think you are the best out there and nothing needs to improve, you probably need to shift your mind a little bit and be a perpetual student. – Jessica Robison

Yeah, plenty. In the yard of my first house, I planted these dwarf apple trees but dwarf trees stay that way only if you burn them. I drove by and I saw a 12 feet tree right in front of a 912 square feet little ranch house. When we sold the house I told the new homeowners that I would take care of the garden, do maintenance but they are not gardeners and ended up with this giant apple tree. I have sometimes said ‘yes’ to some clients’ requests without really thinking it through. For example, I told someone that I could plant the garden for under $150 and six hours later I realized that wasn’t a good idea. Even in my mind, I thought I could plant that in two hours and it just wasn’t possible. You’re constantly communicating with the client back and forth, you’re making changes, etc. I usually start with two options. A lot of times when I plant a garden, I’ll do two stages. I like to get people started in a small way and in the second stage they feel more confident about what they want and how to achieve it. I would never put 12 beds in someone’s house because I know they won’t be able to take care for that many. So, there are things I didn’t account for but I really wanted to be able to provide for them regardless whether I was getting paid enough. – Jessica Robison

It depends on the week. Let’s say, in May I know there are about 8 seasonal weeks when I can do spring installs and I’ll do two or three installs per week and that’s it. I’m not taking more than that. If I work Saturday, I don’t work Sunday because my family is young and I need to spend time with them. I also need time to work on my own garden. I try to block my time off so I can dedicate Thursday and Friday morning from six to eight o’clock to Acton Food Forest. I also only work half of the Saturday or Sunday. I work on things at night that are not related to clients like invoicing, creating content, etc.  That’s my busy season. I should get more sleep but I don’t have that luxury. I can’t sleep. If I think about doing something, I have to get it done. – Jessica Robison

Let me tell you about my pet peeve. I don’t like Elon Musk. I don’t want to do anything that man does, he’s not kind. It is fine to have grit, to work hard but you have to be kind. There’s no reason to abuse your workers, they’re your biggest assets. I don’t agree with people who turn him into this god of entrepreneurship. Another thing I don’t agree with, I don’t think anyone should be a billionaire. I think when you get to the point where you have more money than you’ll ever spend in your lifetime you have to start giving back. If you’ve accumulated that much health, you’re not giving back enough. You don’t need to be a billionaire, you can be a multimillionaire and you can still be happy, successful, make a difference. No one needs to make a billion. You can make a billion and do so many things like building trees, give people free lunch, build homes for people and not just let it sit in your bank account. It won’t change nobody’s life. – Jessica Robison