Success :)

Looks like my Craigslist ad has been quite a hit. LOTS OF INQUIRIES FOR JUNK.

My confidence as an Internet marketer is GROWING.

Rest assured, plants are still my priority. I'm taking a trip to Central Florida to get some more citrus this weekend. Stick around for my big announcement! Soon I'll be advertising for citrus!

Misrepresenting....

The problem with collecting people's unwanted stuff is they completely misrepresent how much stuff they have.

"Oh it's just a washer and a few pallettes."

No it's about a garbage truck worth of wood that was so high the washer wasn't visible. I just kept driving and lost the gas it took to get out there. If anything I would've charged $200 and I could've gotten it all with my trailer. But that was miscommunication. Communication is why I write this blog.

On the landscaping side of things, I've gotten some great call-backs lately. It's wonderful to hear from old customers.

Removed the remainder of a man's life

A man died and brother and I helped remove his earthly possessions. It was poigniant.

I didn't know what to expect when I started Miami Junk Removal. But it's been an amazing learning experience. Five jobs to date. About four landscaping jobs coming up. In the middle of one. But still less than when houses were selling like crazy...

Creating vs. taking roll

I'm a bit of an academic person. I have a tendency to read www.aldaily.com daily and I am within striking distance of a second master's degree.

Well. I just got an email yesterday on the listserve that makes think twice about being a professional student. This woman already has two master's degrees AND a PhD and she is now working on her second doctorate.

She's not going to make any great discoveries at this point. This is almost selfish!

But designing a yard. Planting flowers. Using heavy equipment to plant large trees. The whole process requires knowledge and the end result is so beautiful. School lead to many things but it isn't the only path. Also when you divorce school from all practicality you get stagnation.

Other people are interested in garbage!

Look at all these people turning junk into gold. Seriously!

Planting vs. garbage collecting

I discovered there IS a market for serious junk removal in Dade county. Truth is it will always remain second to plants and trees. Even if I could rake in the money I would rather focus on landscaping! I'll keep the google ad up and take the calls that fit my schedule...but I'm saying people really don't like touching garbage and they'll pay to get it removed. Potential business, if you want it. Most don't I imagine. Let's say, most who read blogs in their spare time probably don't. But it's an open idea if you want to make a few bucks.

The high cost of gas makes me think in terms of efficiency and I've met some cool customers. I've relieved them of their burdens and gotten paid pretty decently. My truck didn't mind the extra load :) But it isn't my passion.

Why become a customer?

I started this blog as just another outlet to discuss commerce and the ins-and-outs of running a business. But as I'm linking from my business site I'm also trying to sell a product. This post will be a brief look into why I feel ordering landscaping or plants from Plants From Paradise is a smart move.

First of all I'm lower priced than most retail nurseries and the big box chain stores. There's nothing wrong with a plumbago from Home Depot but you might pay close to 9 bucks after taxes. Also you have to lug it around and bring it back to your house. I'm cheaper and I'll deliver it. You'll love the quality.

But I'm not the cheapest either. If you are looking for a pure commodity, drive down Krome Avenue in Miami and stop into any one of the nurseries. Quality differs immensely. Some places will sell the nastiest things you've ever seen and some are quite good. I've gotten to know the business and I know which nurseries deliver quality. But you have to get that education for yourself and you might not want to invest the time into it. Also, is the minimal break in price worth all the driving and hassles?

I do have a slight competitive advantage. Our nursery is one of the best around! People have been coming for a long time and now I've got an online venture which has been successful for the past year.

That covers plant delivery. But why trust Plants From Paradise to design a landscape? First of all, I know the plants and trees. I know what they need to grow. I know where to plant them. I'm never going to promise something I can't deliver. I have fun designing it and putting it from conception to reality. It's a beautiful thing.

This business has a low cost to entry and anyone can pretend to be an expert. Ask tough questions of anyone promising things that will be part of your home for potentially decades! I'm confident that as my customer list grows and grows, Plants From Paradise will earn even better business from referrals and I'll need to hire managers instead of just landscapers to install.

View of Mr. Stinky's Webcam

If you don't go to Fairchild and you live in Miami...I say shame on you! You are missing a beautiful experience!

Here's a webcam of a Mr. Stinky in Brooklyn:
http://bbg.org/vis2/2006/titan/webcam/

What will we do with all those lawn mowers?

SO many people work to cut yards. SO many people build lawn mowers. But this article claims they are close to developing grass that doesn't grow past a certain size:
http://www.hhmi.org/news/chory20060504.html

Amazing. I don't know what to think.

Hurricane Palms

My business blog started off so strong and I let it lapse for four days. Hmm...I was busy with plants and I couldn't get a chance to get to it.

I have been noticing so many dead queen palms outside of people's homes from the past hurricanes. Don't they want to have living trees? Also wouldn't they want to plant trees that do well in hurricanes? I'd recommend sable palms and alexander palms over queen palms!

Plant Progeny

Here's an article about plants and their ability to transmit information to their offspring:
http://www.nature.com/news/2006/060731/full/060731-16.html

Nature.com is a great site by the way!

David

The Royal Poinciana

The royal poinciana grows 4-5 feet per year once established and I've seen many fall down in storms. Nothing scientific, just my observations.

You'll spend a lot to maintain it...but when it's in bloom...WOW!

People love trees and plants

It's fun to do a landscaping job for someone who really loves plants.

The thing is, that's mostly everyone who calls or emails me. So people are usually really, really happy about their plants. Are things 100% perfect? No, of course not.

Actually I wanted to write about all the positive experiences but one negative experience jumps out at me. This is a good platform for me to give my side of the story.

A customer called for arecas. I gave her the sizes and prices. She said she had a row growing and that she needed two more. What could be easier?

I drive across town and show her the two best arecas I could find in the nursery. Her reaction? She says they are "too orange".

"Well, ma'am arecas in the sun usually take on an orange tint," I explained.

"No they don't."

So I noticed arecas all over the neighborhood. I walked across the street with her and showed her the orange looking areca fronds. She still didn't agree. She wanted something GREEN.

She pointed to a pygmy date palm and said she needs color like that.

"But that's a different species of palm."

Now she was mad at me for being persistent. "I KNOW that's a different species of palm. I can't use the palms. I'm sorry. Good bye."

I was so shocked at having to lift two heavy trees back on the truck. I have so many happy customers. I wanted to start dropping names and giving numbers about revenue and web presence and number of acres my family owns and their revenue...

But that would've been pointless. The customer is not always right but it is her right not to buy arecas if she doesn't want them. It seems stupid to refuse a perfectly good plant and waste my time and require me to drive all over town spewing gas fumes only to send them back for being orange when they get that way in the sun.

If she thought they were too small, I could accept that (even though they were overgrown). If she realized she was broke and she couldn't afford it, I could accept that (even though she lived in a big house). I could accept almost any reason for wasting so much of my time and gas, but slightly orange arecas? I mean the second result a google search brings up is this: "Leaves are ascending, curved at the apex with sheaths and petioles yellow or orange tinged."

If you don't believe your own eyes across the street, at LEAST believe google. If it's on the Internet, it has to be true.

Traditional Advertising

Today I went back to my roots. I passed out fliers with two helpers proclaiming a "Summer Sale!" It was so much fun to be riding around and meeting people. I'm excited to see what sort of responses I get.

Business as a creative force

I'm certainly enjoying this blog. Although I don't have readership now, I feel if I keep it up I'll gain readers. In this post I'll explain why I'm so confident of that. I'm riding a technological wave, and amazingly many aren't along for the ride.

I think the Internet is making some corporations much stronger but it is creating amazing new opportunities for individuals. Look at Home Depot and plants, for instance. Home Depot has fine plants and if someone needed just one 3 gallon plant that wouldn't be a bad place to go. It's efficient for such purchases. But most sales associates can't match the knowledge a 30 year grower has. They don't have hundreds of acres of stock on hand. They bring in stuff and slap a price tag on it. Someone who might not even know the type of plant scans it in and you put it in your minivan. Back up the supply chain...

The Internet opens up commerce for so many individuals. To think Craigslist lets people advertise for free (what will the newspapers do?). Google adwords gives me the same exposure as a multinational. Maybe Super Bowl advertising is important for some people and maybe advertising builds a sense of trust for people. Perhaps I'm underestimating the power of the brand because I'm in somewhat of a fragmented industry. No one company monopolizes landscaping or plant brokerage in South Florida.

Obviously this isn't restricted to trees. Moving and storage, logistics, microbrews, etc, specialized marketing on the Internet is a great enabler....I would like to move Plants From Paradise online beyond merely being a place for people to order plants or landscaping to becoming the place for design tips, discussion areas about plants, information how landscaping affects the environment and so on. I envison knowledge to be much more valuable to this undertaking as sweat and muscle.

Obviously landscaping is physical work. It gets hot in the summer and I'm on every job up to this point. True I have helpers and sometimes machines are needed, but it isn't the speed that I can dig a hole which will create anything of lasting value. Planning a landscape is process which requires intimate knowledge of the plants. Such skills aren't quite as fungible as the ability to rapidly dig a hole. (Not that I can't dig quickly- invite me to install a tree, I'll prove it-it's just that creating a landscaping plan and a successful business requires so much more.)

I'm looking forward to seeing where www.MiamiJunkRemoval.blogspot.com will go. It will be a profitable venture, I'm sure, and I can coordinate junk removal after landscaping jobs. The price of gas is FORCING us to become more efficient. Hopefully people won't view this foray into junk removal as a dilution of my goals with PlantsFromParadise.com, because it's merely a way to recoup some gas expenses. It'll be interesting: Bring in Beauty, Bring out Junk. I already have a motto.

In the meantime, I'm reading "Getting Things Done" by David Allen. I have to say I recommend it so far. I'd say I lived up to the title today, if you consider snorkeling in the Keys getting something done :)