Sorry, I was busy quitting my job and starting a plant shop
Hi, It’s been awhile since I wrote a post here, 84 days actually, which is the longest I have gone without writing blog content in years. I have a good excuse though. February 17th, we bought my parent’s house (my childhood home), we’ve been renovating the basement, my mom moved in, my sister is living here until the summer, my husband started a new job, my oldest lost her preschool until the fall, I quit the job I’ve been working at for 10 years and 11 months, and I impulsively started an online house plant business.
It’s been busy.
You probably don’t give a flying crap about most of that, but I do want to share a bit about the process of leaving a really secure job for a really un-secure one, because frankly, I’m going to be talking about launching an ecommerce business a lot here in the next few months — so buckle up.
Questionable choices and faith
I was working for my aunt and uncle at a fulfillment business for the past decade. There have been huge pros and cons to that. I had a lot of flexibility on my role, I was working in an exciting industry, my job was very secure during the pandemic and I had good benefits. However, my schedule was very inflexible and my job was not easy to do with two young kids at home. The nature of the job was stressful and at times caused me to feel really burnt out. I also had to balance family and work relationships and that is always tricky to do well.
All that being said, I left a consistent paycheck, a 401k and health care behind as well as a decade-long career with some huge name brands. So, why did I do that? God told me to. Actually, if I’m being completely honest, I think he told me to about 2 years ago and I was kind of terrible at listening.
My 11th anniversary at my job was coming up and I knew that I had to pull the trigger. I had literally no plan of what I’d do next, Nora Conrad (my site) only makes me around $400 per month consistently, not exactly replacing my salary. I prayed and asked friends and talked to my sisters for hours leading up to sending my notice and every single person I talked to, including a bible study I was doing at the time, pointed me toward house plants.
Up until 3 years ago, I always thought that plants were for people who had a “green thumb”, so I usually avoided them. I had an outdoor garden, and that always did well, but it never occurred to me that maybe I just wasn’t taking care of my indoor plants in the right way. All the little tags that come with a plant at the store never give me much information on how often to water, how to water, what kind of fertilizer to use, how often to repot, and what to do if something went wrong. I would go in blind, and usually end up killing the poor thing.
Now I have collected over 60 varieties of house plants and continue to grow that number. I have always admired house plants and people who had the patience to take care of them and grow them well and I have always loved the ecommerce/logistics side of my day job.
So… the day I sent in my notice, I also filled for an LLC under the name Sister Sprouts. I was starting an ecommerce house plant business with no idea what to do next.
8 week count down
I gave 8 weeks of notice to my job to allow me to fully train and help with my transition, so the count down started on replacing my income and getting my business up and running. At the time of writing this, I have 10 days left at my job and only 1 paycheck remaining. But here’s a mostly complete list of all the things I’ve done in those 6 1/2 weeks:
- Picked a name — Sister Sprouts
- Applied for an LLC
- Applied for an EIN
- Published a Shopify site
- Set up a domain and email
- Registered for my Colorado Sales Tax License
- Set up an Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube and Twitter account
- Posted consistently to those accounts and gained around 300 followers
- Set up branding and a logo
- Set up CoSchedule to plan and schedule social media content
- Set up MailerLite to send email newsletters
- Set up an Etsy account to cross-sell on the platform
- Set up and got approved for a facebook/instagram shop front
- Set up Shop pay, Paypal, Venmo and Stripe
- Got a business bank account
- Got business insurance
- Signed up for three farmers markets and got approved for one (I was late to the season)
- Set up Quickbooks and hired a bookkeeper to help me set things up
- Got wholesalers and suppliers for all my products and plants
- Got a designer to custom design pins and stickers
- Set up a printful shop for swag items
- Designed and ordered business cards, fliers and other marketing materials
- Designed and ordered custom shirts, aprons and hats for friends and family
- Ordered all the supplies and tent items I’ll need for farmers markets
- Set up a business phone number
- Set up a dot digital business card
- Started propagating over 160 plant cuttings
- Received, repotted, treated for pests, treated for root rot, acclimated, photographed and listed over 100 plants for sale
- Created a plant database for giving details on plant care
- Partnered with two organizations to donate 10% of all profits to foster care communities and youth in foster care
- Built and in-home plant studio for storing and lighting all plants
- And about 500 other small tasks…
I’m not listing all this to show off, or to brag about how much I got done. I’m posting it because I’m incredibly proud of the work I was able to produce in such a short time while working a full time job, training my replacement and being home full time with a toddler and preschooler. We are capable of amazing things when we are motivated.
Looking forward
I will be talking about the process of starting this business and breaking down some of those tasks into more detail over the next few months — partly because I love being transparent about what goes into starting a business and partly because there’s not enough information about this for plant and ecommerce shops specifically.
I want to be fully honest with my sales, profits donations, marketing plans, suppliers, ups, downs and everything in between because I want more people to take the next step on their dream. I want to make this process a tiny bit easier for the next person, even if that means I’m “helping the competition” (which I don’t believe is a real thing btw).
Over the next few months, these are a few of the things I’d love to share about. Please let me know if any of these spark your interest or comment if you think of something you’d like me to touch on.
- How to find wholesale vendors when starting a new business
- How to import plants from other countries
- Monthly updates on my sales stats, follower count and what I did each month to get those numbers
- How to grow a brand from nothing without knowing “marketing tactics”
- How much it actually costs to start an ecommerce business
- How to grow your business in the local community
- How long it takes to fully replace my salary with my own business
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