Building an Herbal Business from the Ground Up with Laura Ash

Welcome everyone to the Virtual Herbalism Conference. I'm your host, Lindsey Feldpausch. In this session, I have the pleasure of welcoming Laura Ash. Laura is the founder of Land of Verse and Holistic Business Folk. She's also the Director of Operations of the Beneficial Plant Research Association, founded by Dr. Andrew Weil. Laura is an herbal entrepreneur, focusing in on holistic education and business. She has spent years cultivating her businesses and brand, weaving with story and craft.

In this conversation, we will be exploring the topic "Building an Herbal Business from the Ground Up." We'll talk about the inspirations that sparked Laura's entrepreneurial path, the practical steps and behind-the-scene decisions that shape a successful brand, and the values that hold everything together. Laura's journey offers both grounded business practices and creative insights for anyone dreaming of bringing their herbal vision to life. Laura, thank you so much for being here with us today.

Thank you so much for having me. Let's go ahead and dive in, Laura. I would love to start off by hearing your story and talking about building your first business. Where did you start?

What a wonderful question. Where did I start? I do often say that herbalism finds you, you don't find it. And for me, herbalism came through being sick as a kid. And a lot of people find herbalism through their own health journey. Most people I would consider herbalists or would consider themselves herbalists, generally have some health concern that they're trying to figure out and have found herbs through that journey. So I found herbalism on my own when I was 19, and I read a book on aromatherapy and realized that that was the journey I was going to take, and it helped heal my lung condition at the time. And as I was learning about aromatherapy, essential oils, I started learning about food as medicine. This was all self-study and most of self-interest. I realized that in order for me to be an herbalist, I was going to have to run my own businesses. And so my entrepreneur life, I I think has been informed about me just wanting to do what I love to do and do it for a living and not have to rely on other people to get me the positions in order for me to be doing what I love to do. Although I did start in herbalism at an apothecary in Seattle called Tenzing Momo when I was 21. I got a job there because I was really interested and did a lot of self-study, and through that job, was really able to I trained under master herbalist for a couple of years, and I recommend it for anyone that wants to be an herbalist as a profession, go and get a job at an apothecary or a health food store or a natural product section of a health food store because you'll learn about what people want, what people need. You'll be able to help them, and you'll be able to learn about the products in the space as well. I learned so much in that first couple of years.

And so when I started my first herbal business, it was in San Francisco. I ran a medicinal chai tea company. I essentially franchised it. It was in Seattle when I was there at Tenzing Momo, at the Pike Place Market. As I am a person that didn't come from a lot of means, I was always working multiple jobs. And putting myself through school and figuring out my life. I was working at this cafe at the same time. I was working as an herbalist or a very student herbalist at this apothecary. And the cafe was a medicinal chai tea cafe called Morning Glory Chai. I moved back to San Francisco, and I was able to start the San Francisco version of Morning Glory Chai, which was a very spicy medicinal chai tea company. I did that because I wanted to, because I wanted something that was interesting, because I wanted to figure it out. And this is where not everyone grows up to be an entrepreneur. Not everyone has a million ideas of entrepreneurship, but I definitely, definitely was one of those people. I got started by renting a little commercial kitchen, which out of a café when they were closed in the evenings, and I would brew my chai there. I would fill it with glass bottles that were reusable with these new caps every time. I would label these glass jars myself and ride my bicycle to cafés for delivery, which is very dangerous for glass bottles and very heavy in these baskets. But that's how I started my first business was with very little money and a good support from a friend in Seattle who still has that chai tea company. But I learned a lot along the way. I lived on very little at that time, and I ended up putting myself through Herbal Medicine School at the California School of Herbal Studies while running this business. So I would go to school during the week up in Sonoma County and drive down to San Francisco, brew my chai and deliver it, and then go back up to Sonoma County to do my school, which was I was there five days a week at that time. So that was my first entry level into business and into an herbal business.

And from there, I've built many businesses. I started my private practice after I graduated from the California School of Herbal Studies. I ended up co-founding an organic spa called Ava Organic Spa in 2008, the Fisherman's Wharff of San Francisco, and built all the product line and built all the services there, and really built more of a design-heavy focus on what herbal experiences would be in this spa space. From there, I ended up selling my chai tea company and moving overseas, and ended up in Tanzania and started documenting traditional medicine with a Maasai there. And a Maasai herbalist asked me, "How do you know all these things, Mzungu?" Which is "white person." Because I was asking all the questions. "How do you use this plant? How do you extract this? Do you use water? Do you use fat? Do you use this for pregnancy? Do you use this for babies?" He's like, "Why are you asking me so many questions?" I said, "Because I'm an herbalist. I want to learn from you." He said, "Will you help me write this medicine down?" I said, "Of course, I will." I was able to do that with Saiyanga, who's a Maasai herbalist, and ended up founding a nonprofit after that called Herbal Anthropology Project to protect and preserve traditional medicine around the world with intellectual property protection. So I moved back to the States, and that was really what I was going to do when I grew up, was focus on conservation and traditional medicine preservation. I was a mom of two children at that time. I just became a single mother. It was a very tumultuous, difficult, yet inspiring time for me. And then life happens. I needed to move back to San Francisco, and I ended up acquiring Scarlet Sage. It was in its 20th anniversary, Herbal Apothecary in San Francisco. So I ended up getting a small business loan, and I acquired Scarlet Sage, and I ran that for about nine years and then shuttered it, sadly, a year, just almost actually two years ago, exactly. And that was a huge awakening in what does it really like to run a profitable, successful, very busy company, a retail brick and mortar.

From there, I learned a lot of business chops. Before that, I was learning the basics of the nomenclature of business, the basics of how to run a business, focusing a little bit on marketing operations, how to get things started, how to move through, how to navigate systems, which is an important part of the privilege of being able to run a business. How do you navigate systems? How do you file things? What organizations do you need to go to to get support? That was already there. And then with Scarlet Sage, because I acquired it, it was a full running business making a lot of money at that time. So I jumped in the deep end very quickly. Had up to 25 employees. It was a very robust business. And then I actually founded the school that I currently have, Land of Verse, when we went online during COVID and we had to shut everything down. We were already running classes and education in the basement of Scarlet Sage, which was a big deal. But in 2020, we moved online, and that helped me understand this online learning is very different from in-person experience. It's a different way to communicate, different way to teach, and a different way to offer the herbs and connect with plants with people in their home on computers. How do you do this? This is a very different business. So I pivoted and made Land of Verse a separate entity and was able to get a pre-seed investment with some investors to start the online school. At that time, there was a lot more frothy investors, they like to call themselves. And we were able to launch the brand in 2021 and really build this online experience. And so now I'm teaching herbalists and healers how to run their own businesses. Ideally, small businesses that are profitable, really lifestyle businesses that people can do. And now I have Holistic Business Folk going. So that's my summary of my business.

What an incredible evolution you have lived, Laura. I feel that we often think that when you start a business, there is a clear direction that you are heading. Do you feel that that has to be the case? I also want to hear, how do you carve out your niche when you're starting a business and any guidance you have to offer our listeners who are seeking this clarity in developing their first business?

It's really interesting because I think everyone lives a nonlinear path, but I think herbalists have a more atypical nonlinear path. I say that because we're not getting PhDs and then going getting professorships at UC Berkeley. We're not getting masters and then jumping into... Like an MBA would get you into a business role. The roles of herbalists in the professional world sometimes are few and far between, depending on how many roles you've already had in certain business settings. There are significantly more roles in the natural product industry than there are in, let's say, teaching and education. Generally, people have to carve out their own space there. So the nonlinear path that I know it was going to be nonlinear, I think I was excited for it to be nonlinear. Speaking about a personality around an entrepreneur, I think entrepreneurs want new things. They like exciting adventures. They want to meet new people. They say this in business, "Your network is your net worth," meaning your most valuable assets in your life are the people you know. And I think entrepreneurs like to know a lot of people. They like to experience a lot of different things. So I think the world of entrepreneurship fits my personality very well. I am very excited about meeting new people and doing new adventures. Does it come with risk? Yes. It's a significant risk. Does it come with financial gains? Absolutely. How easy is that? It depends on the journey that you go on with business and also the luck of the draw that always comes with life. But I say nonlinear compared to others because most people I know have had some nonlinear career path, but it doesn't have as many potential bumps in the road as I would say, herbalists typically have.

And then your second part of your question, carve out a niche. How I understand niche is really very typically business, where they say "the riches are in the niches." And so the niche for me has always been people that want to be in the world. I have never been an herbalist for the people that want to live in the woods. I really am not that herbalist. There's a lot of herbalists that I love that are those herbalists that want to be off-grid, in the middle of nowhere, quiet. I'm an urban person. I live in an urban environment. I've traveled the world. I want people that are excited about modern life in a grounded, beautiful, sustainable, ethically-focused way to access traditional medicine, to access the well-being that you can achieve with herbs. So my niche is people that are urban, often well educated, and people that are interested in herbalism that might not see themselves in other herbal communities. I really am passionate about that community because that's my community. And often with niches, we understand it's who we are in the world. And I think there's a lot of meditation and self-searching to find who we really are, to love ourselves in that process, and then identify those niches that reflect our own values and the way we see ourselves as well.

I think that it's so important for us to recognize these points you've made that we're finding our own selves within the path we're developing in our businesses, and that really has everything to do with our core values and our intentions. When you started off in building your businesses, how did you find those values and set your own intentions, and how do you continue to make those day-to-day business choices that uphold and align with these values?

Yeah, that's a great question. The values align decisions is a really big piece because money can be an easy veil to deep knowing and deep intuition. Money comes with greed, and I think it's important for all of us to check ourselves. I've fallen into that many times of wanting to be a successful person, wanting to support my children and my wife and my family, and the pieces that I do best in the world is running businesses. And of course, I want to be successful and have the things that other people have in the world and the things that I care about. Making those big decisions that are value-aligned, I think it does take a lot of integrity, and it also just takes experience. I've I've put my foot in my mouth one too many times. I've made bad decisions one too many times. And I think learning from those decisions, it has been the biggest support system for me to slow down, to question a decision I have to make, to really be serious about it. I use my intuition a lot. I use guided meditation a lot. And I'm really serious about, is this the thing that is most aligned with myself now and the future? And the future person that I am and that I want to be my future reputation, my future goals for my financial goals, my future goals for my well-being. That's an important piece for me now. Have I always made decisions like that? Probably not. Shiny people, shiny things have been an easy way for me to get distracted. And so my hope and my goal is to make sure that I am consciously aligned in all of my and I get almost there.

I think this is part of the foundation of building a business, to really clearly develop what you intend and value in cultivating your business. Let's go through, for our listeners, the foundational steps that you took to move your entrepreneurial ideas to actual businesses and making sure we cover the essential steps that every new herbal entrepreneur needs to know?

That is a complicated yet very important question. I will do my best. I can do it in a couple of different ways. One is more energetically aligned, spiritually aligned person. Every herbalist I know wants to help other people in the world. Every herbalist I know is a healer and connected deeply, even if they're more scientific biomedicine, pathophysiology-focused, versus folk medicine, traditional lineage, ancestral medicine-focused, they're all wanting to help other people. Sometimes before they help themselves. So the question that I always ask any student that's interested or any herbalist that's interested in running a business is, what do you want your life to look like? And I really help people walk through this process because this is an important essential piece. Do you see yourself running a manufacturing company in a warehouse in 10 years from now? If you do, build a product line. That's what that reality looks like, actually. Unless you're getting it third-party manufactured, then you can step away from the manufacturing. Most herbalists are not those people. They're usually very involved in the R&D and research and building and watching that quality. Is that the journey you want to take? Because if that's not what you you want to be, you might be picking the wrong path. So what is the life that you want to build? First step, do you want to have a lot of time in the garden? How can business build around growing herbs in your own garden? Are you making medicines? Or you have your own clinical practice? What does that look like? And I want that to be the foundation for a business endeavor. And if there's not a business endeavor, whatever that fits that, then maybe your herbalism practice is a hobby, and it's not the way you actually make your living. And that's a beautiful thing. It can be a side hustle. It can be how you pay for your groceries. It can be how you pay your utilities that month. It doesn't have to be your main source of income. So it's always the piece that I just want people to have a reality check when they're starting something.

Then we look at what is your entity type that's essential for you to start. Sole proprietorship, LLC, which is a limited liability corporation, which also could be an S Corp, which is not that really important right now to share about what that is, or a C Corp, a corporation, or is it a nonprofit? And a nonprofit would have to be for public benefit, non-revenue creating. So you can create revenue, but it goes directly back into your constituents and the people that you serve. So what is the entity type? I usually recommend people start with a sole proprietorship in the United States. It's very similar in Canada, where if you're running a small business and you're creating a small amount of money from a small business, it's very affordable to start a sole proprietorship. It's just using your social security number. It's $25 If you want to change your name to something other than Laura Ash. I want to be Healing Business, Healing Business is my DBA, "doing business as." And then I can open a bank account, a business bank account. That's the essential. That's cheap, it's affordable. I always I recommend start as cheap as possible to see, does this business work? Do not put more than a couple hundred dollars into your business when you get started. Just don't do it. Because if you change your mind or if you don't really like seeing those customers or those clients or really don't like manufacturing, the only way you're going to learn that is through the process of doing it. So start small. If you want to start at Farmer's Market, start at Farmer's Market. You'll have to get insurance. So looking for insurance, you can only do that after So you have your business license. So first start your business license. Second, insurance. You can get practitioner insurance as well. The one that I use, and I'm not going to pay by this company, it's called Alternative Balance, and they help healers and small herbalists, Ayurvedic practitioners, have practitioner insurance. And I don't know if that's something that I can talk about necessarily a lot here, but I support people to get some insurance when they're in practice because the If it will also be the legal language you can use in the United States as a practitioner and as an herbal practitioner. The other is general liability insurance. And this is if you have... You have to have it if you have a brick and mortar, you have to have it if you're at a pharmacy market, and you can get that anywhere on the internet, truly. And it'll just charge you for how much money you're making. There's a percentage there.

From there, as you figure out what's my next step, if you need more protection because Because you're running a product business that you're selling in other stores, they call business -to-business or B2B or wholesale accounts, you want to become an LLC, which is a limited liability corporation that does cost more money. It's $800 a year to run an LLC. That's the fee that it costs in California, so I'm not sure what other states charge for LLCs. But what it does is it protects your personal assets separated from your professional professional asset. So your business, whatever your business owns, if someone does sue you, and this is true for product companies, then they can only take what is in your business and not what you own personally. If you're in a home, if you have a car, If you have savings, that is protected, that is separate. And so LLCs are an additional protection around a riskier business endeavor. So I do recommend LLCs for people that find themselves concerned, they're concerned. They're afraid of the law. I recommend people doing that when they start selling products to other businesses because that's the least control you have over your customers and who's connected to you. If you're selling direct to customer, direct to your customers through your website or through individual sales, you can trust people a lot easier. You can tell people to communicate to you directly if something's wrong or if they have questions. It's a lot simpler to grow your business slowly in that regard, but you can definitely go from sole proprietor to LLC.

From there, if you want to get investment, you become a C corp, and you would be a C corp from the beginning if you were looking for investors. And that's a whole other business endeavor I'm not going to go down. If you want to become a nonprofit, nonprofits are public benefit corporations. So you are a corporation. You have to apply to have your 501(C)(3). Here in the United States. And what that is, is saying, I am public benefit. I'm here to support. A wonderful example is a free clinic. I'm a free clinic that supports immigrant workers, and I'm doing that with herbs, and I don't charge them any money. I rely on donors from outside of my constituents to support that work. That's a perfect example of a nonprofit. Those are the different entities you want to consider when thinking about starting your business or maybe What is something that you've been doing for a while and you want to grow to the next level. What is the entity? How am I protecting myself? And what is the next stage of growth for me when I have a long-term goal?

I think teaching the listeners, Laura, about the various business entities is such a important foundational knowledge base for people who are hoping to move into that first step. Another big part of developing a business is the brand itself. I know that you have done this numerous times and have cultivated beautiful brands within your businesses. How did you approach those early stages of brand building, choosing esthetics and messaging and the energetic tone of the work you were doing for the business?

I think branding is everything. The only reason I say that is because it tells your story. That's all branding is. It's really good storytelling. And I've been lucky enough to have an authentic connection with my path. I think this, again, this nonlinear path, you have to be comfortable in nonlinear and a traditional community being an herbalist. Being able to tell a story, being able to be confident in your story is really important from the beginning of brand building. The most important part of a brand or any business is who are you talking to? Who is what we call the target market or the niche? We talked about the niche earlier. Who are the people that are going to pay you real money to do what you love to do? And what do they care about? And so the branding process is first about who's your target audience and who are your target customers? What do they care about? What images do they resonate with? What fonts do they associate with you being an expert or you being a folk traditionalist? They're going to use different fonts to actually explain those two different things. And so branding, logos, colors, images, movement, spaciousness, even on a website or a business card communicates more to the subconscious of your value than anything else outside of your own experience, outside your own voice, outside of the way that you communicate who you are in the world. Social media can reflect a lot of that as well. But branding really is about how are you communicating to all the different parts of the brain who you are in the world and who you're not. When they say, I love this saying, "When you're talking to everyone, you're talking to no one." It's very true. No one wants a generalist. No one wants someone to say, "I can do everything for you. I can be a plumber and an herbalist and a business advisor and a babysitter." Sure, you can do all of those things. Let's say you can actually do all those things. What is your business entity and why are people Why do people care? Why are they going to pay attention to you? There are, what, a billion people in the world. It's a huge amount of people. There's plenty of room for everyone. The only Any way, though, people will hear about you over the noise of everyone who's online these days or in your community is who you are uniquely, what is your unfair advantage, and how are you bringing that to the forefront. So take your brand very seriously. Really explore the brands you love and question yourself, why do you love these things? What makes you feel a certain way? And once you decide on the feelings that you want other people to feel about your brand, start figuring out, do I want softness, connectiveness, quiet, solitude? What brands, what colors, what fonts, what images make me feel that way? And dive into that and explore a different feeling, energized, fun, interesting, pop, like danceable. What colors and images? As I'm sharing this, I'm sure a lot of you have these ideas already in your head on how different those two brands are and how specific those two brands are. I don't even have to show you images. We already know these things. So I would have you explore who are the people you're talking to, who do you love to serve? Who are your favorite, favorite, favorite people that you want to actually talk to after hours? And why do they want you? Why do they want your services? Why do they care about you? And there are brands for no brand people. There's a bulk section in every in a natural food store without any branding on it for all the people that love the bulk section. So even if you're no brand person, that's a brand. So remember that everyone has a identity that they are connecting with and values they're connecting with, with your identity and your values. And be honest with yourself about what that is for you, and be honest with the people around you. The next stage for branding, outside of this development and questioning and getting excited by building a Pinterest board, getting some collaging out, whatever you need to really visualize what this could look like, is find some potential customers, not your friends and family, because they love you and they're going to tell you it's great anyway. But find the people that you think would actually pay for this and ask them, give me feedback on this logo, give me feedback on this. What do you think? Give them three options. Get people together for tea, get people on a Zoom call. Have them give you honest feedback. That will be bold. Build as you're developing your brand. And take it seriously and try as best as you can not take it personally, because it's actually the best thing you can do is get critique in that moment before you put up all that time and energy of building a brand and a website and a business card and a voice and a social media. That's hundreds of hours right there. So really allow yourself to explore this as objectively, sadly, as possible.

There's so much potent information in that, Laura. It feels exciting from that basic building a business standpoint. You get to craft and cultivate the thing that excites you to excite your audience. Part of building a brand, to me, is it's a world-building experience. It's that immersive idea of entering into a world that has been created to cultivate the experience of a product or a service. I want to hear, how do you feel that the difference between selling an item and crafting a meaningful offering is done through brand development?

I think these are two beautifully intertwined create products and offerings, yet people separate them as separate entities. For example, if you're an herbalist who sells products, you can't sell that product unless you are an herbalist. You couldn't have created that product unless you're an herbalist. Let me give you an example. I'm going to tell you about this honey that someone gifted me, and it's a honey created by the Indigenous people in the Yucatán. And this honey has so many medicinal properties. You can only use a drop at a time to 10 drops because it's so viscous and it's so strong. It's antimicrobial and it's good for your skin. Eczema, psoriasis has been used traditionally for thousands and thousands of years. And it's so precious in that region. You have to bring it over yourself across the border. And it It might be in any plastic, as you know, because it would leak or it would reduce the quality of this honey. Do you want to buy that honey? Probably. Did I even tell you the name and show you the packaging? No, I did not. Because what ends up happening with people trying to sell products is they try to sell the product itself saying, "Look, anti-wrinkle, anti..." Without telling you, "This is my experience with this product. This is how I created it. This is what my challenge was in finding a product that fulfilled my needs." These are the people that I've helped with this. This is the quality of the herbs that grew for me to find this. I'm sharing a story. I'm sharing a history. I'm sharing the why behind a product. So I see people trying to sell the assets of the product, and they don't know why it's not selling when actually they need to be selling the story and the lifestyle around using product and why they themselves have created it. Storytelling, which is sometimes the hardest thing for an entrepreneur to do about themselves. It's very, very, very difficult. This is just how our brains are wired, the why behind the product instead of the what behind the product. So if people can walk through with others on helping craft their story around this because it is so challenging versus just selling the assets, it is It's a really important journey on creating that brand awareness and creating that storytelling. And then the product just so happens to be the thing that gets you connected to that person. It just so happens to be part of this world that you want to be in. Like you were saying, the world building, right? You want to be a part of our world? Here's an anti-wrinkle cream, or here's a digestive tea, or here's a pregnancy tea, right? You are creating that world, and the product is the entry point.

I love that story, Laura. I feel like that was such a prime example of how we can cultivate yearning and desire within a product without even stepping into the realm of branding or ingredients. I mean, it really is the power of story and what an important tool that is for businesses. Can I ask you about tools that you use to create resiliency in yourself and your business as it's growing. We've covered the foundational steps and the branding; how do we make it through those early days of growth?

I love this question. Resiliency is essential if you're running your own business. One, you're going to get critiqued by others. And two, there's a lot of comparisons in the world of business that people do to themselves, and they feel that others have towards them and vice versa. To be able to be resilient and therefore feel the feelings of failure, if things are not going the direction you want to go or not making enough money, or being able to have the gusto to pivot a company when it needs to pivot, it needs to change, maybe certain products need to go away, maybe they need to die, maybe they need to be lovingly buried, maybe they need to be expanded, and you need to look at this potential growth opportunity if that's part of your business goal. To have that ability, you need to, as much as possible, have clarity of mind and have a sense of confidence that comes with self-love. Now, a lot of people are herbalists because they've experienced some trauma in their lives. So sometimes that can be a challenge with people, especially when they've had financial trauma in their lives when it comes to business. So what I generally recommend is do something every day that you really love that has nothing to do with your business. So for me, it's dance. I grew up as a dancer. I was a professional dancer for many years, and I was injured for a couple of years, so I couldn't dance. And it really took a toll on my mental health. And when I started getting back into dancing, I'm happier, I'm more joyful, I feel more resilient, I feel more connected to my own life, my own well-being, I'm definitely happier. And that I have to make better decisions. My stress load is reduced, right? We can say adaptogens all day long to help metabolize that cortisol. Awesome. They do not take over when you are chronically stressed. They don't help you make better decisions necessarily if you are not moving your body, if you are not connecting with something deeply in your life. My other thing that I do is I take hikes every weekend. I get out in nature as much as possible, and I walk my dogs. I'm able to spend time with my children and my wife, and having that separateness that helps you create a better focus in your business is really important for resiliency.

The other tool is, and this is something I'm really, really serious about is that I've never done anything alone. I say that not because I've had sometimes financial investors, but I have advisors around me. I have people that are willing to be on my advisory team. I have other entrepreneurs that are much more successful in many areas than I am. I pay for business coaching at times and advisory. I get guidance when I need guidance. I ask financial questions to finance people. I have lawyers that I ask about legal issues. And I know that this is a cost not everyone has access to, but there are other people that will be on your side and in your corner that don't charge anything, that are much, much more successful and well-resourced than you might be. And that is worth its weight in gold. And I've had so many advisors help me. I help other entrepreneurs all the time, especially small entrepreneurs. Just some feedback, some guidance, some questions, some ability to say, "Oh, I've done that before, and this was my experience." It's really helpful. So I would encourage people to, one, care for themselves deeply, go to therapy if you need to go to therapy, get out in the woods, do some forest therapy, Connect deeper with your body, move your body and do your homework. Make sure you're connected to your finances. Make sure you're connected to advisors. Make sure you're connected to people that have done this a lot longer than you have. And continue moving in that direction.

These are some really important growth steps, Laura. I want to hear from you a moment in your business when you first realized, yes, it's working. What were the conditions that helped that breakthrough happen? I know you've ran a number of businesses, but I hope there's a moment that sticks out for you that you could share.

Yes. When I was running Scarlet Sage, there were many moments of that where it was a time and a place also. So often when we're in a good time and place for a business, and you love what you're doing, I think that's an element, too, things can go in your direction. Timing is everything. So sometimes when someone starts a business and they I think it's a brilliant idea. It might not be the right time if it doesn't pick up. It might be too early, honestly, when especially for those pioneers in certain areas of growth, they might be too early. I knew an entrepreneur, for example, who had a women's sports company. This was 10, 12 years ago. Women's sports is booming right now. She was ahead to close her company. If she started it today, and she started this, it would have been very, very successful. So sometimes it's timing. But in my experience, I knew it was going well for one thing only, which was money. Money was flowing in. I think people were spending the money. They were walking in. I had a good amount of customers. And one of my finance teachers did say, look at the numbers. The numbers will tell you everything. And if you really understand finance, or if you don't understand finance, but you want to get better at it, learn about what does it mean to have a successful company? Yes, revenue, money coming in, and then making sure you have certain what they call KPIs underneath that, "key performance indicators." For me, it was how many customers are coming in? How many sales did we do every day? These are KPIs that I would track every day. What was the average order? How much did it cost? These are the pieces that told me of what a successful day, what a successful a week, what a successful month looks like. And then the goal is to keep that successful, keep your costs down as much as you can so you actually make a profit versus spending all that money above what you're making. So that was really exciting, especially in San Francisco at that time, where things were building and the city was very an exciting time pre-COVID, where there was a lot of money being flowed through small businesses at that time. So that did feel really good.

The other piece that other businesses that I've had that have been quite successful in certain moments and certain endeavors is reaching the goal that I set for that particular launch or that particular moment. And when you set a goal, it's actually a really great way to, one, take reality into consideration. Is this goal a reality for me or is this a lofty goal? But what is that goal that I want to set? And when I'm able to reach it, it feels really good. If I'm able to exceed it, it feels really good. But it also keeps me on track with what's working. Marketing is a big piece of that. And being able to communicate to the right people as we talked about that target market is a big piece of that. So I'm generalizing a little bit about these multiple ways that I found success in these different businesses, but those are the main pieces and main tools that I would use to measure success.

I think It's important to talk about these tracking steps, the ways that we are measuring, right? And it can look different in these various ways, but it's, I think, important to have from the outset to know what building and growth looks like in your individual practice. I think that as herbalists and the many hats that we wear, it can be challenging to figure out how we can align ourselves with the deep creative work that we are doing and the practicalities of being a business owner and the needs for production. How do you balance this side, the creativeness of business, the inspirations and the artistry, with the practical side of timelines and inventory and finances?

Every small business owner has to wear all the hats. That's just the way it is. And I meet a lot of people that say, "But I'm not a finance person. I'm not a organized person. I'm a creator. I'm a writer. I'm a healer." And yes, I agree. Some people really don't identify outside of their craft, outside of the thing that makes them feel real, real good. If you want to be a successful as a business owner, you have to learn everything before you pass it on. And I'm serious about that. I've learned that the hard way. I've passed on jobs and responsibilities to people. Bookkeeping is one of them. I pass it on to a bookkeeper that really didn't understand my business very well. And I had to actually end up firing that bookkeeper and hiring another one because they made a lot of mistakes, and I paid a lot more taxes than I needed to. Thankfully, I figured it out, and I was able to get a reimbursement. But having The ability, doing the hard steps of learning all of the pieces is the journey of a business owner. Now, how do I balance that all? I usually have to psych myself up a little bit to do a day of admin or a day of finance, to be totally honest. I create spreadsheets that are very pretty. I have a lot of colors on my spreadsheet, so that's a big piece of it is trying to find the dynamic experience with these. But I also give myself a timeline and a deadline. So things like finances going through, what are my overhead this month? What are the things that I need to spend money on? What is my budget? I give myself an hour or two, and sometimes it'll go over because I'm really into it, and I allow that to happen because I want to get into the flow, and it takes 15 to 20 minutes to get into the flow of any menial task that's frustrating. I think the two main things that people actually avoid are health and finances. So we work in the health field. Isn't that great? But the finance part is what we all need to do to survive on this planet. I'm not independently wealthy, so I don't have someone managing my own finances for me. So I've had to figure it out myself. And it's been the most empowering skill. The other stuff, like building a website and creating a brand and creating copy, I actually find that to be extremely creative and find that to be really fun. Some people People don't find that to be fun. They find that to be very stressful because they don't see themselves as creative people. So wherever you sit on that, what's stressful for you and what's creative for you, I would try to balance that out as much as possible, but schedule it in your week so you do set aside the time that you need to operate your business, market your business, and then create more in your business.

One of The issues I see a lot of herbalists doing is they wait far too long for perfection before they launch their product because they love making product. They love making, creating new things. They want this formula to be perfect. And I think that's really wonderful. Maybe it does need more research and development on that product. But I think what I would ask, if you identify as one of those people, what's keeping you from launching this product? What's keeping you from sharing it to the world? And if there is some underlying fear of being seen, of failure, of concern around how to do it, you don't have the skillset, et cetera, then try to write on a list of the things you feel like you would need in order to launch that and start learning those skills. And it could just be a YouTube channel. It could be taking a small course. The Small Business Administration, sba.Gov, has free business classes for anyone, and it includes everything from branding to finances. So there are a lot of free resources out there for folks if they are interested in filling those gaps to give themselves a little more confidence in joining the workforce.

There is so much to learn in starting off in your first business and even continuing the growth of an existing business. What do you see the main barriers for folks folks who are starting off in their first business, and I want to hear about what personality type do you believe works best as an herbal entrepreneur?

I'm going to answer the second part of that question first. The personality type that I feel like fits the best, and I'm not an astrologer, so I would use this astrological signs if I was an astrologer. I am a Scorpio, so maybe that's a personality for I don't know. But the personality type is someone that is willing to put themselves out there. I have seen some great introverted small business owners. They have a harder time in general building a marketing campaign that has their face or name on it. That's definitely normal. And I have seen a few successful businesses that don't center the founder in social media or marketing campaigns, and you have to be really strategic aging about it. But I think having some conscious extraversion, some conscious desire to be out in the community and serving your community and being that resource is really helpful. Risk-taking is part of it, but Some people have built up enough education and enough resources and networks in order for that to be less risk. So it's not necessarily the biggest piece that I think you would need to start a small business. There is a little bit of risk, but sometimes it It's not extreme. But somebody that wants to be relied upon in their community and has a desire to be relied upon in their community, I think, is the biggest personality trait, which means in a small rural area, it might just be a small practice or a small product line that you're launching, and you have

A very specific group of people that you're serving that supports you in that endeavor. I've seen those very small businesses be quite successful, actually.

So, the barriers to entry for anyone who wants to start a business is the belief in that you can. And the second is the education around business tools in order for you to feel like you can market yourself or grow a business. That's the major barrier.

You do not need an MBA in order to start a business. You really don't. MBAs are set up for people to learn a lot about businesses and to grow businesses, but they often work in other larger corporations that are at scalable turning points in their life. So it's not essential for an entrepreneur or a small business owner to have an MBA, but it is important to know where to find that information when you need it.

So the biggest barriers are, where do you find your information when you need it? How are you resourced? Are you using savings? Are you bootstrapping your first business? How much money are you going to need? A lot of people wait. They're like, I need $10,000 to start this business. If you need $10,000 to start that business, it's not a small business. It's actually a much bigger vision, and it's a scalable business. If you want to start a small business, you should be able to start with a very small amount of money to test the market.

So being able to be supported in how to launch something in a small scale is where your resources come in, is where the people you have around you come in, is where some of the education, listening to podcasts, doing some interviews of people that run businesses in the same way you want to run it. Therefore, if you're listening to Tony Robbins, or if you're listening to really large entities, millions of dollars of businesses, not that those are not going to be where you go, but if that's not where you're at now, now, listen to the people that have slowly built their businesses, slowly, in many ways, put very little money into them to get started, and allow themselves to find their niche as they grow, maybe had it on the side for a while, and and then grew it into something that was full-time. Those are the people you want to hear from to learn the lessons that they've learned because they were able to do it affordably while taking care of their lives. And that's what I really encourage as much as possible, making sure you have the right people around you with the right messaging. Because a lot of people waiting for that $10,000 grant that's really difficult to get means that they don't really want to start their business yet. If you really want to get there, I know you can get there. I know you can get there cheaply, and I know you can get there with support around your community. We might not need that MBA, but it does sound like we really need to listen to ourselves and to look for the organic growth that can occur in our business endeavors.

Laura, I want to hear from you in the role that intuition has played in your business buildings, especially when you're choosing what to make or launch next or when to pivot to the next thing?

Intuition plays a massive role in my life. I wouldn't have become an herbalist if I didn't have a strong intuitive sense of what I wanted to do or needed to do in my life. Again, herbalism finds you. You don't find it. Intuition is a beautiful copilot. I think I balance intuition with intellect as much as I can, learning about the Earth-based skills such as finance, such as running businesses, being able to navigate systems like taxes. Those are my Earth-based skills. I don't use a lot of intuition in those moments because it's not an intuitive practice. This is humans trying to be human in the world and dealing with a capitalist system. But what intuition really is, where it is vital in my decision making is which direction I'm going if I have multiple options. For example, I use a lot of guided meditation from my teacher, Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés, who I work with and is very important to me in my spiritual life. She guides us through a lot of meditation to understand the inner psyche, to understand spirit guides, however you would want to see that or communicate, understand what that means. I use those same guided meditations when I or similar guided meditations when I teach students on how they can be in their truth for where their path lies. What journey are they going to take? What do they want their life to look like? And I utilize that tool because we stand in our own way often based on what we want now versus what we want later. It is easy to be in fear mode when we don't have enough money, we have to figure out something quickly, or we need to launch something and yet it doesn't fully feel right. What is the next step? So I try to meditate every day, and I try to use this guided meditation in my own practice to walk down different paths in my mind, imagination, and say, if I chose this journey, where would it take me? If I chose this path, where would it take me? And I do that often, sometimes multiple times a day. It helps me get out of my own way enough to trust my subconscious mind that it has better information than my frontal lobe often has. And if it doesn't make sense to me, I put it to the side and say, okay, for later, I'm going to see what comes up in that. But it's helped me find the teachers that I need to find. It's helped me build retreats around the world. It's helped me decide on where to go to school or not to go to school. And also because I am a dancer, too, and I have a physical practice, my intuition also lies in my body and in my gut, in particular. Everyone has a different place where the intuition sits in their body. I check in with that area, too. If I have to make a very fast decision and I don't have time to go into deep meditation. For example, if I'm in a meeting with someone and they ask me a question that's a major decision I need to make, I usually check in with my intuition to see this. Do I need to pause this and come back later? Is this something that I feel good about? And trying to get out of the way of a yes versus excitement. And I don't mean excitement in a bad way. I mean that sometimes I know I can get very excited about an idea versus the reality of it being correct. And so I tried to differentiate the two when making decisions about business, because money is involved and money is really in this excitement category. The possibilities are endless. Millions of dollars is fun to think about. I get to preserve land. I get to be in conservation. All the things that herbalists I know would do with money, which is why I believe herbalists needs to make more money in the world. The world would be a much better place if herbalists had a lot of money, versus this is a grounded choice for the direction I'm moving forward for my well-being, for my financial goals, as well as maybe things I don't know yet, maybe the things that are yet to come that I'm not fully aware of or prepared for. So that's how intuition plays a role in my daily decision making and then my long term goals.

I love this idea of working to balance intellect and intuition in your business practice. I also love the idea that we as herbalists deserve to make more money because we would do good things with it. This all leads me to my next question, which is about how we as herbalists and potentially business owners can navigate our own lives around this capitalistic value of time and money alongside the sacredness of the wisdom that we hold.

This is an important topic, and I'm really happy to talk about it directly. Capitalism is not set up for the success of everyone. It's set up for a small percentage of people to be successful. And it's the barrier to a lot of people understanding that they have access, a lot of barriers around business ideas, business nomenclature. Capitalism is built for the small percentage of people to even understand how to talk about money, how to invest money, how to scale a business. It's also layered with the patriarchy and white supremacy, and capitalism includes all of these things. How do we balance that with making a living as an herbalist? This is something that I think I wish more people understood the value of what it means to make an actual living as an herbalist outside of the "money is dirty" conversation. Money is options. That's the one thing learning about finance from very wealthy people is they look at it as an objective point of view. They look at it from options. Money is just options. It actually has no value with me personally. I try to not say I am worth it when I charge a certain amount, because at the end of the day, I'm priceless. There's no amount of money that is going to pay for me as a value. I charge market rates for what people are willing to spend on this service or this product. My worth is priceless. The value of this service is a certain amount, according to the market, according to your community, according to your target audience. Everything from, we could charge $1,200 if we're in the luxury market to $20 for this, almost the exact same product. That's how wide these margins can go. They're both worth it. Their value is different based on their audiences. So when I look at herbalists having a barrier around, I can't do this because of money, I believe deeply that that comes from a lot of love and a lot of care and a lot of commitment to creating a lineage, keeping a lineage going that has a lot of value outside of money. And even has a tradition of not taking money. For example, the Sámi people in Northern Sweden, which I have some heritage in, do not charge and will never charge. They cannot charge for their herbal services or healing services. It is against their culture. Now, as Western herbalists, we are working in the biomedicine, Western science, Western research field. When tech people can make $350,000 at Google a year to build tech, why are we questioning our value when we are helping people heal and reconnect to themselves and the Earth in the process? So I recommend seeing money as options and seeing it as, if I can charge this amount of money, then it will provide for myself and my family, and I will be able to support other healers, support other artists, support the Indigenous communities that I love and I'm committed to, support any of the causes that I love and I'm committed to, because when I'm more successful, my world becomes more successful. And that's what money does. It moves and supports other people. If we can see it as that, not as a sacred item we pour holy water on. That's not money. Money is not energy. Or all of the best people in the world would have more of it. If it was actually energy, we would all have more of it, and the bad guys would have a lot less. It doesn't work that way. It's a manmade tool. So separating it from the bad guys and using it for our own value and also seeing the value around sharing things without money also. Sometimes some of my best clients are the people I don't charge anything for. It's not because I don't charge anything or I charge something, meaning that I will serve my people. I serve a lot of people for very little. I'm able to do that because I charge a certain amount for my people that can afford what I charge for. So that's the non-answer conversation that I have around capitalism and the sacredness of what we do. Not everyone's going to agree with the way that I run a business and the way that I charge or how much I even charge for my practice or my products, but it is the way that I've been able to make a living doing what I love to do.

Well, that was, to me, a very nourishing message, especially from someone who has such a pulse on businesses and the business world. We want to hear from you, for our listeners out there who are at the place where they want to think about starting their own business in today's world. What are the current trends or shifts that you see that these entrepreneurs or potential entrepreneurs can benefit from knowing as they dive into that first business?

A lot of things have changed, actually, since COVID. So it used to be you build a big audience and then start selling products or services, like on social media. It was much easier to build huge audiences before 2020. And and then grow and sell products there. Now the algorithm, or at least the entities at large, have changed enough where it's all about ads. So if you have a really good product and idea, you can spend $5, $10 on an ad and see what people click on it, go to your website, et cetera, and for very affordably and a lot less time than building a ton of content and trying to get a ton of audience members, your ads actually might do that for you very quickly. And you can see which ones are working, which ones aren't, and building some ad acumen. And there's a lot of people selling a lot of cheap ad-type services or educational materials out there on social social media. So that's one of the biggest things that I've seen change. And it might be a trend, which therefore, it might change again, more than likely it will. But it's a pay-to-play model, and that's what the biggest difference is. So if you see people with tens of thousands of followers, they have been working on that probably for a really long time and have continued to build outside of that. A lot of small business owners don't think about ads because they think, oh, I'm going to get there eventually. But ads, again, you can run for $5, for $50, for $10 to see, does this work? Do I want to put more money behind it? And does it convert to sales? That's the big thing with ads. Does it convert to sales? Or does it convert in the way you need it to convert to people? Download the PDF or sign up for your email newsletter, whatever that is for you and why you want to build it.

The second thing is there's a lot of ways to start things really cheaply that you couldn't before. Substack, for example, is a great newsletter that you would have to pay $150 a month on Mailchimp or some newsletter outlet that you can actually now have people pay you to read your information. So the barriers to creating a really big company or a really big website and spend a lot of money on it and then have a newsletter list that's expensive, it's become a lot more affordable to get your name out there and get the word out there on marketing than it ever has been. And that's exciting for folks that see themselves as really good writers or see themselves as really good marketers. There's some avenues that you can do. The other is video content on YouTube seems to be really successful for a lot of people, and some have tried TikTok. I'm not a TikTok person, so I can't actually talk about TikTok. I avoid it like the plague, but some people are really successful there. YouTube seems to be a place where a lot of people that love video content and I want to educate people, that seems to be a really good place for a lot of folks to start. And even dynamism is really important online versus in person. So making sure editing tools are really good if you are in that digital space often. When it comes to brick and mortars and in-person experiences, the most successful places I've seen are in rural communities with those target audience people highly in high concentration numbers. So bigger cities seem to be a lot more challenged right now with retail and brick and mortar because a lot of retail is struggling in a lot of big cities. Again, it depends on the city you're living in. But these smaller towns and rural communities seem to be going strong for smaller businesses and especially apothecary. So I would look into that for folks that are dreaming of a physical retail space as well. So, other than that, I would say making sure you're out, making sure you don't feel like you have to be too polished in order to get your name out there behind the scenes is really successful for people to see. And that's worked really well for a lot of launches that people really want to get to know you. And a less polished is sometimes better. Editing tools are really good for video, but when it comes to social, people really want to see you as an individual and want to understand a little bit more your life, which can feel a little vulnerable at times. But those are the most obvious trends I've seen recently.

I love hearing about these from you, Laura, because I feel that they are a little bit counterintuitive, what we might think is a traditional business model versus what these trends are showing you as somebody who is quite experienced in this field. For this same audience, these beginning business folks, for the herbalists who have a dream tucked quietly inside but haven't taken that first big step, can you share one piece of advice that you would offer to help them get started?

Find clarity around who you are. We take the concept of authenticity for granted in our society. Society, it is not easy to be an authentic person. Sometimes it means you are far removed from your community. Sometimes it's a saying no to something that people around you say yes to because you are listening to your deepest authentic self. They're often called the black sheep in many ways. Maybe all are bless or some forms of black sheep in their world. But make sure that you are not trying to copycat something that you see someone else doing. Because they're successful. And digging deep with, what do I love? What do I love, love, love, love, love And what is my voice in that shouting? Why am I uniquely qualified for that shouting for people to listen to me? What they call an unfair advantage, which I don't necessarily like. It's a negative term, but it's your unique value proposition. It's what you are in the world that creates your uniqueness. And it might end up being the way you were raised. It might end up being an experience you've had. It might end up being your life path, your journey. It might be you as a queer person. It might be you as a mom. It might be you as a person that grew up overseas. It might be just something that was out of your control, not something that you've had to cultivate. But what is it that helps you connect with other other people? And is that the thing that you want to talk about? I've seen people try to launch businesses that they actually had no clue what their unique voice was in those spaces, and they spent a lot of time worrying and wondering, Why am I not hitting those goals and making those sales? They didn't say, I am this person, and this is who I am, and I am sticking my roots into this thing, and I am shouting it from the rooftops. Those people, and you know those people, you see them all the time on social media or in the news or on different types of platforms. Those people are not afraid to be who they are, and you can feel it. You can see it. It's deep. And they love the ability to share that with others. And the more I do, the more businesses I've been in, the more I realize that if I don't love it, I shouldn't do it. I just shouldn't because I have the option. I'm not out there trying to get a job. I mean, I should. Sometimes I feel like I shouldn't be out there trying to get a job. But I love what I do, and I'm able to do it with a lot of different types of people because I love what I do. And it could end up being mundane things. I love who I work with, or I love what I'm serving, or I love the constituents we're serving If anything of the love category. Not every business is going to have everything you love. You're always going to dislike something in running a business. It's always going to feel like a slog in some way, shape or form. It's just real life. A real life does not feel good all the time. Same with your business. But do you still want to do it at the end of the day? Is it still the thing that you feel excited about? That's the right decision. And then from there, go through what we talked about entities, different entities, and then seeing how much money it will take you to get moving forward.

Laura, you have given us so much to work with. I'm really truly grateful for you sharing your business acumen and your authentic self with us in this conversation. Before we go, I want to make sure that we take time for you to share with our audience where they can find you and the work that you do out in the world.

Absolutely. I run an herbal medicine school called Land of Verse, and that's landofverse.com. That school is based on lineage and creating more authentic relationship with your own ancestry in the world of herbalism. We will have a retreat coming up in June at Oshala Farm, so check that out if you're interested in joining. Then I have Holistic Business Folk that was launched last month. This was my journey of going through all of the business education for all of my students and other Herb School students and helping them launch their businesses. And that's a monthly membership, and they can go to holisticbusinessfolk.com. And anyone here that's listening can get a discount code HERBSCHOOL, which is $7 off. It's a discount code, so feel free to check that out. It's just $20 a month, but I want to get a lot I have people on there that really want to share a lot of information and connect with other herbal entrepreneurs as much as possible. Then if you're interested in looking at the work that I do with BPRA, the Beneficial Plant Research Association, you can go to bpra.org. We will make sure to get that coupon code that you have generously offered for holistic business folk, as well as all of these links in the chat, Laura, for our listeners to come seek out some more knowledge from you and to learn about business even further through all of the offerings that you have created, as well as your herbal medicine school. Thank you so much for your time and teachings today. It has been a pleasure to listen to you share all of your business wisdom with us.

Thank you so much Lindsey and Herbal Academy for doing this. I'm so honored.