This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
What's up, friends, listeners, community, side hustle school. I'm so glad you're here. I hope your march is starting off well. It is March 2021, at least at the time this episode's coming out. If it's later, I hope whatever time we're in is starting well for you.
Welcome as well to Throwback Thursday, where we take an in-depth look at somebody whose story has evolved considerably since we first featured them. Last week we heard from a North Carolina pastry chef who grows a retail shop in addition to her personalized wedding cake biz, all in the midst of the global pandemic. It was, shall we say, an uphill batter. Now today in our latest feature, we'll hear from a plant influencer in Toronto, Canada. You did hear that correctly, a plant influencer.
This guy offers corporate workshops throughout North America, has lots of Instagram followers talking all about plants and terrariums. His original episode was entitled, "Plant Lover's Tiny Terrariums Take Root on Instagram." Alternate take was plant lover does not water down message. What has happened since? Well, a lot. He has had to adjust to his in-person workshops being non-existent, all while corporate activity budgets are being cut.
But he's in it to win it and we are rooting for him. You get it? Because he's the plant influencer. All right, I'll stop. Let's hear directly from Jesse and I'll come back at the end to wrap us up.
[Music]
- Hi, my name is Jesse Goldfarb. I'm located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. And the name of my side hustle is Teeny Tiny Terra. And I was featured way back on episode number 858. My side hustle is hard time so far.
And I make plant arrangements and I teach people how to make plant arrangements, primarily corporations trying to engage their staff. I also do what I call as influencer. It's not necessarily influencer work, but I do have a following of about 44,000 on Instagram. I do get to do sponsored posts, whether they're paid or just the product is sent to me in exchange for a post, which is kind of fun. I get to get my creative juices going where I take things that definitely don't relate to plants like beard oil.
And I get to get creative and come up with an idea that allows me to integrate it into my feed and into the plant world. The corporate market actually found me. There was one company that found me on Instagram and asked whether I'd be interested in doing a class for, I think it was 15 lawyers. And I said, yeah, sure, that sounds interesting. And after I did that, I started marketing myself towards that.
I reached out to my day job. I worked for a national retailer that has about 90 stores and a large corporate office. And I asked them if they're ever looking for events for either their staff or their customers, if they'd like to use me to teach people how to get more planty. So it happened that they were having a big event at one of their flagship stores here in Toronto and asked me to teach about 100, I think it was about 150 people how to make a terrarium in less than five minutes each. So it was a very, very quick little terrarium making at one of their events that the customers got to get their hands a little bit dirty.
And yeah, since then it's sort of snowballed and I've got some pretty big companies reaching out to me to teach either their staff or their customers how to get more planty. And since COVID happened, I've had to rethink how I do things, just like we're meeting over Zoom or people are meeting over Zoom. I'd done a few virtual classes before for big companies in the States. So I'd already know and I already had the equipment. It was just essentially turning it on and speaking to the audience and customizing it per client.
My biggest challenge right now is I'm getting a lot of inquiries about, like usually when there's a big lockdown, I'm getting a lot of inquiries about classes, but then they want the class, the virtual class at a really cheap price at a fee that's just not sustainable for me to take on. If you wanted to follow in my footsteps, I would say, definitely do a little bit of research. Make sure that the thing that you're getting into or the thing that you want to do as a side hustle is not necessarily oversaturated. I would never join an industry like the beauty industry now knowing or the garment industry now knowing that there's just a billion people trying to do it. So make sure you just check and make sure that there's not too many people doing it if you want to be thought of as a leader in that space.
[Music]
Thank you so much, Jesse. Just a couple of quick comments from me. Totally agree with this point about how you should make sure your field is not oversaturated. We here at Side Hustle School, we turn down a lot of stories that fit into these typical beauty or fashion fields, similar fields that are just hyper competitive because it's hard to do well. I mean, of course we have some of those stories, but we try to always figure out, okay, what is different about this?
What's special about this? How have they been able to succeed when so many people in these oversaturated fields struggle? Whereas someone like the plant influencer doesn't have nearly as much competition. Now, obviously there is such a thing as plant Instagram. There are other people out there talking about plants.
He's probably not the only plant influencer, but much, much, much less competitive than beauty or fashion, just to use a couple of comparisons that he used. So keep that in mind when you're trying to figure out, okay, what is it that I'm going to do? How am I really gonna make my mark? I'm grateful to him, Jesse, for helping us out with this segment. This was one of our popular features of 2020.
As you have heard so far, we're gonna keep it rolling this year as well. If you have a suggestion, a nomination from our archives of more than 1,000 stories, let me know who you'd like to hear from. And if you have a question for the show, a general question, just come to sidehustleschool.com/questions. Jesse, meanwhile, is at teenytinyterra.com. Teeny tiny terra with two R's.com, or on Instagram @teenytinyterra.
Last link of the day, our show notes are at sidehustleschool.com/1524. Thank you so much for listening. Be sure to subscribe. You can do that wherever you get your podcasts. And I hope you'll join me again tomorrow.
My name is Chris Guillebeau, this is "Sidasle School." [Music]
- From the Onward Project.
