Podcast 250: Disaster-Proof Your Herbal Business

Economic uncertainty is part of business – but there’s so much you can do to disaster-proof your herbal business and make sure it stays strong throughout the ups and downs.

This episode is the first three steps in the work of diversifying your revenue streams and also your product/service offerings to make sure that your herbal business keeps growing!

We’re focusing here on how to shift your marketing so that your products/services remain essential as people tighten their budgets, as well as shifting which products or services you offer to make sure that you really do remain essential! In order to do that, you’ve got to really know your customers, and so we’ll talk about exercises for how to do that, too. Taking the time to gather some data will help you to stay relevant and survive the budget cuts!

And if your business is still in the planning stages, that’s great – that means that you can be structuring your business to be economically resilient right from the start.

Most importantly though: you don’t have to do all this alone! Join our Herbal Business Program and let’s do it together! Not only will i personally help you, but you’ll also have access to our private community of herbal business folks – so that you get a nurturing peer support group as well!

The Herbal Business Program covers every aspect of GMP compliance, as well as every other part of running your business, from getting registered, paying taxes, and getting insurance to building your website and marketing without selling out – even hiring employees!

All of our courses include twice weekly live Q&A sessions and you can ask questions in the discussion thread attached to every lesson – we answer them ever day! Plus we have a student community where you can get support from other business herbies too!

If you have a moment, it would help us a lot if you could subscribe, rate, & review our podcast wherever you listen. This helps others find us more easily. Thank you!!

Our theme music is “Wings” by Nicolai Heidlas.

Episode Transcript

Katja (00:14):
Hi, I’m Katja. And I’m here at Commonwealth Holistic Herbalism in Boston, Massachusetts. I have another episode of the Holistic Herbalism podcast for you. This one is specifically about herbal business. So, if you have an herbal business or if you are dreaming of an herbal business, this episode is for you. I want to talk about disaster proofing your business. You might be looking at all the everything that’s going on and thinking ugh, what if the economy literally crashes this summer or at any point in the future? I mean, that is always a possibility. There are a lot of things that we just don’t control. And that can make you nervous as a business owner or a person who’s thinking about becoming a business owner. These days things are a little extra chaotic. And chaos is a hard environment to run a business in because consumers get nervous, and they don’t buy as much stuff. Don’t worry. We have a solution. So, let’s talk about what this means for your business because there are a lot of things you can do to be planning for resilience. And maybe also just before we jump into all this, I want to give you a little bit of encouragement. Starting in 2005 I was self-employed as an herbalist with no other sources, no non-herbal sources of income. Before that I had an extra part-time job on the side or whatever. But as of 2005, that was it. That was the end. All herbalism all the time. And I have been through lots of economic ups and downs since then.

Katja (02:00):
Personally, I feel so grateful that I have my own business now and also through all of that. Yes, economic downturn and uncertainty is hard to navigate. But at least I know that nobody is going to fire me or lay me off without warning. My job is only… I am the one who is totally in control of my job. Nobody’s going to come and just be like sorry, we don’t need you anymore. If things get tough, I can work harder. I can change my strategy. I can expand into new markets. I have so many options. I’m the one in control, and I can keep trying new things until I find what works in every different kind of economic shift. And that has been true throughout any number of ups and downs over the past two decades. And it is still true, and it’s going to be true into the future. So yes, it is scary if you’re just starting out in business. It’s scary if you’ve been in business for a really long time. But the goal is to plan resilience into the business that you have or the business that you’re dreaming of building, and to plan for multiple revenue streams, and plan for lots of strategic options so that you’re ready for whatever comes. And that is what we’re going to talk about today. Let’s dig in.

The Importance of Multiple Revenue Streams

Katja (03:29):
First I want to talk about some options that you have kind of as like an overview. We’ll get more specific about some of them later. It is really important when you’re self-employed to have multiple revenue streams. This isn’t just about herbal business. This is about like any kind of business, right? It’s just smart to have multiple sources of income. Because if something happens in one area, then you’re covered in another. Okay? Maybe not totally. I was going to say you’re totally covered in another. Maybe not totally, but you’re not without a net. So, if one of your revenue streams dries up or whatever, that’s not your whole income. You have other areas that are still supporting you, and that is so much more sustainable. Before we go any further, I want to be super clear. I do not mean multiple jobs. If you are a clinical herbalist, then we want to build multiple revenue streams as a clinical herbalist. If you’re a product maker, we want to build multiple revenue streams as a product maker. This is really, really, really, important. Okay, first, because the regulations that govern herbal business say that you can’t be a product maker and a teacher, or that you can’t be a clinical herbalist and a product maker, right? That’s the whole tell and sell thing. We’ve talked about that in other episodes of the podcast with GMP in the title. So, that you can go find those.

Katja (05:01):
Okay. So, that’s the first reason that this is important. But way more important than that is that you will absolutely burn yourself out if you try to do it all. You don’t have time to add another whole full-time job to your schedule. So, we want to find multiple revenue streams for the job you are already doing and not invent more work on top of the work that you already have, right? So, what this means is that if you are a product maker, we are going to look at lots of different markets for your products. So, maybe you go to farmer’s market, and maybe you do wholesale, and maybe you do online sales. And okay, maybe something happens. And locally your in-person sales are down, your farmer’s market sales are down. Maybe because there was some kind of disaster in your area, and farmer’s market got canceled. Okay. Well, now your farmer’s market sales are zero, right? But your wholesale and your online sales are doing fine. And so you’re not there with nothing. You still have two thirds of your income, and you can ramp those up to cover the losses from that other lost revenue stream, right? That’s what we are trying to do here. We want to find lots of different ways to get your products to people who want to buy them.

Katja (06:28):
And then if you’re a clinical herbalist, we’re going to do the exact same kind of thing, but it’s with people instead of products, right? So, we’ll get you seeing local clients, and then seeing some clients online, and what about corporate clients and stuff like that, right? But we are not going to try to say okay, you’re a clinical herbalist, and you need more revenue streams. So, you need to start a product line, and you should be wholesaling and selling online. You do not have time to do that. You would just completely fall into a pile of dust, right? So, we want to expand the work that you are doing, not expand the number of jobs that you have.

Katja (07:08):
Okay. And then if you have a different kind of business that is not being a clinical herbalist or being a product maker, don’t worry. The process here is going to be the same. All the steps that we go through will be the same. These are just two examples that I grabbed. But we’re always going to be looking at ways that you can expand the work you do to more people. Not expand the types of work you do, but the work that you’re already doing to more types of people. So, that if any individual group isn’t spending as much right now for whatever reason, the other groups are still covering you.

Being Clear on What You Do & Do Not Do

Katja (07:38):
Okay. So, in order to do this work, there are some things that we need to get really solid on. And this is part of your business planning. You would need to be doing this planning anyway, don’t worry. But it is specific, like these are the specific parts of the plans that we are going to use to build this resilience in, to build these multiple revenue streams. So, the first thing is that you need to know what you do. That might sound silly. You might be like, of course I know what I do. I know what I want to do. If you’re already in business, yay. You already know what you do. If you’re building your business, you probably already have a plan about what you want to be doing. But here’s the thing. This is the chance to get really solid about what you do and, more specifically, what you do not do. When I say you need to know what you do, what that really means is you need to know what you are not doing. And the reason for that is because any time that we are building expansion into your work, we risk burnout. And so if you are really solid about the kind of work that you want to be doing, then we know that we are going to be expanding your reach in the area of work that you are doing. And that is going to drastically reduce your risk of burnout.

Katja (09:09):
If we start just trying to willy-nilly expand your reach in all different kinds of areas, now you are wearing 57 different hats trying to fulfill all of these obligations in lots of different areas. And you only need one hat. Okay, well no. You’re self-employed. You will have many hats. You’ll have the accountant hat, and the marketing hat, and the website hat, and all the hats. But in terms of the work that you do for money, one hat is enough, right? So, we want to know what is the hat? What is the work that you do and the work that you do not do? I am a clinical herbalist. I am a teacher. I do not sell products. I don’t make product. I mean, I do for myself. But I don’t try to sell them to people because there’s not enough hours in the day. There’s just not. And also, just remembering that making products is not simple actually. Yes, anybody can make a salve. Anybody can make a tincture. But if you are a product maker selling your products, you are not just anybody making a salve, anybody making a tincture. You are working hard on research and development and making really amazing salve. Not just average Joe salve, you’re making really fancy stuff. That takes time. As a teacher, as a clinical herbalist, I do not have the time to go through 67 different iterations of getting this salve so super perfect that it is going to just blow all the competition out of the water, right? But if you’re a product maker, that’s what you’re out there doing. I don’t have time to do your job. And you don’t have time to do my job because you’re doing 67 different iterations of how do I make this perfect salve, right? So, the point here is just that we’ve got to be protecting our health, our minds, our bodies from burnout. All right. So, know what you do, know what you don’t do.

Katja (11:09):
Now in our herbal business program, we have a whole section on mission and vision statements and really getting clear on what those are. And a lot of people do mission and vision statements so that they can make it as part of their business plan to take to the bank and get a loan. And I’m not a fan of loans. I think it’s better to grow a little slower without a loan if that’s possible, because that way you’re not in debt, right? It’s just always good to not be in debt if that’s possible. But for us, the mission and vision statement is really getting that down to a bumper sticker that makes it super clear about what the work is that you do in the world. So that as you expand, you are expanding the work that you do for more people instead of trying to expand many more kinds of work that you do. Because that’s where the burnout is going to happen. So, in the herbal business program, that is right up at the top about really laser focusing on that mission and vision.

Knowing Your Customers

Katja (12:15):
All right, second. You need to know who you do the work for. Who are your customers? And when I say you need to know them, you need to really, really know them. This is going to be important for two reasons. First is that if we’re looking for new customers for you, we need to know what they look like so that we can find them, right? You make a product, or you do a service, and that’s ideally targeting certain needs. And so we want to find all of the people who have those needs. If we just look for everyone, that’s expensive, and it’s time consuming. But it’s often the tendency, right? Oh, everybody needs my thing. Well, everybody’s not going to buy your thing actually. So, we want to figure out who is actually going to give you the money. Not everybody’s going to give you money. Who’s going to give you the money? Those are the people we are looking for because this is a business, right? So, if we narrow down the specific people that you want to serve, and the people who are most likely to really enjoy and more importantly value your products and services. Then we can target them in marketing efforts, but also we can find them in new places, right? So, maybe you have a local group of people that you’re targeting now. There are many more people like them across the country and maybe even in the whole world.

Katja (13:44):
And so let’s find all of the people who are like that, all of the people who are most likely to super value your products or your services. But we can’t find them if we don’t know them. So, we really want to be clear about what do these people look like? How do we identify these people? Now, yes, as we expand, we are very likely also going to expand the idea of who would most value your product or services. But don’t worry. That’s going to be built into the process. So, this first round of starting out, we really want to know who are you targeting right now as specifically as we can, so that we can use that as our starting point. And in order to do that, you’re going to need to make something called a customer profile. Or you might see it like a target persona or a demographic profile. You’ll see it with different names, but they are always pretty similar. They kind of all mean the same thing. And you’ll find these kind of worksheets on the internet, but they’re usually way too general. So, I made you some fancy ones, and you will find them in the Herbal Business program in the customer profiles chapter. And you are going to find in there customer profile worksheets, mood boards, lots of activities that are going to make it really easy for you to get super specific about who you are looking for. And really, really does this person like to go jogging, or do they like to crochet, or do they…? We’re going to be really specific about it, right? Because the more specific we are, the easier it is going to be to speak directly to them in our marketing. The easier it is going to be for us to find them as we are looking for new customer bases, right?

Katja (15:37):
Again, it is okay to have more than one. We do. We have students who are nurses. We have students who are total hippies. We have students who are computer engineers. We have students who are gaming nerds. We have students who are cottagecore. We have all different kinds of students. There’s nothing wrong with having more than one customer profile. We just want to make sure that each one is very specific so that we can speak to who we are looking for. So, if you have three main types of customer, we’ll make three different profiles that are specific to each one of those types. Maybe it is like moms with kids. And then maybe it is teachers, right? They don’t necessarily have to have their own kids, but they are working with kids. And then maybe another one is pediatric nurses, something like that, because maybe you make a product that’s for children. So, we are looking for those three specific kinds of people. Okay. Well, we’re going to speak really differently to each one of those people, right? The way that we communicate about your products and services to moms with kids will be different than how we communicate with teachers, will be different than how we communicate to pediatric nurses, right? Okay. So, that’s why it’s important to be specific and don’t panic. Don’t try to cram everybody into the same profile. You can have multiple profiles. Start with one because these take a minute to make. But start there, and then we’ll move on. Okay.

How Your Products/Services are Perceived

Katja (17:10):
All right. So, once you have some ideas about who your ideal customers are, the first thing we’re going to do next is look at what that person thinks about your products. Even if you aren’t actually selling them yet, that’s okay. Or your services, even if they’re not actually available yet, right? If we really know this person, it’s going to be so much easier to imagine what they think about your product or your service, and then how we position ourselves for them to meet their needs the best way. Let’s think of it like this. Does that person see your service or your product as a treat? Is it a luxury? Is it an essential part of their day? There’s no right or wrong answer here. But we need to know so that you are positioning your product or your service as what they are. You guys are on the same page about what you’re offering. And so if they see it as a treat, but you see it as an essential part of your day. Then you’ve got some customer education to do to help them get on the same page with you that this is not just a treat. This is an essential part of every single day, right? Or if your customer is seeing your product as a luxury, but you see it as an essential part of their day. Then you have some education to do to help bring them to the realization that this is not just a luxury. This is an essential part of their day, right?

Katja (18:48):
So, understanding what this person, how they are interacting, is going to help you understand some different things, right? Because what we’re really talking about here is economic downturn. And that means people are short on money, right? When people are short on money, what do they sacrifice, and what are they not willing to sacrifice? When you know your customer well, and you know how they are seeing your product or your service. And you’re thinking okay, now they’re short on money. What are they going to spend their money on, and what are they going to do without during this time? It’s going to help you position yourself in the market and move forward in these uncertain times as a priority for your customers. Here’s an example. You are targeting busy moms. You’re positioning your product or your service as a way to give themselves self-care so that they can best give care to their kids and their family, right? In normal times, that’s fine. Let’s say in normal times they have a problem. And the problem is I’m too busy to take care of the kids and me. But I’m a mom, so what am I going to do? I’m going to take care of the kids, and I’m going to suffer, right? And they’re going to solve that problem with money, right, by buying your product or service. Your product or service is going to care for them instead of time, right? Right now they don’t have time because they’re giving all of their time to the kids, to the home, to the whatever. So, they’re going to give some money for your product or service, and that’s going to provide the care for them. They’re outsourcing their self-care to you.

Katja (20:42):
All right. So, in other words, they are thinking I am using some of my financial resources to purchase this product or service so that I can give myself more care in less time, right? That is valid. That is good. And for you as a business owner, that’s a great marketing strategy, right? It’s a valid use of their money. Money is here to help solve problems. You have a solution to the problem. There we go. But now let’s imagine this busy mom becomes short on money, right? Maybe she, or her husband, or her partner got laid off. Maybe there was some big expense. Maybe just tariffs, and everything got more expensive. Whatever. She becomes short on money. So, will that mom continue to prioritize self-care with her dollars, or will she prioritize stuff for the kids with her dollars, right? If it comes down to self-care or school supplies, self-care will lose, and she will buy the school supplies for the kids, right? So, once you are clear on that. When you really understand your customers and you’re clear on how they’re prioritizing. How they view your product, and then how do they prioritize how they spend their money when money is tight. Then you can say okay. In this situation, yeah, she’s going to stop buying my stuff.

When Times are Tight Don’t Panic, Pivot

Katja (22:14):
Don’t panic. Don’t panic. Our theme is always don’t panic, pivot, right? So, now what you’re going to think about is how can I take my product or service and make it be worth this mom’s resources even when her resources are diminishing? So, in this case we are targeting the same person, but we may be making a different product or providing a different service. We’re still doing the same job as a product maker. But we may shift the products that we make available because we realize that our demographic will want different products when they are short on money. We may also find other demographics who still want the luxury products, and maybe aren’t as short on money, and they can still afford them. That’s also fine. That’s a different fork that we could take. But right now we’re just kind of going down this one example. And so you make a product. That product is self-care. Mom sees it as a luxury or as a solution that she can’t afford to purchase right now. Mom runs out of money. What are we going to do? Okay, here are some possible answers. And the way that we come up with these answers is because we really have thought through who this mom is, right? We’ve thought through what does she prioritize and what’s most important to her. So, if she can no longer afford self-care, which was important. It allowed her to be her best self as a mom, but she can’t afford that anymore. How can we make sure that you are still serving her family, and she is still supporting your business?

Katja (23:56):
We can start making stuff for the kids, right? Because we understand that when money is short, the kids are the priority. She will spend money on the kids before she will spend money on herself. We can also say well, hold on a second. Self-care is still important for mom, even if she’s short on money. So, we can start making kid and mom kits, like together kits, and talk about how care of health is important for the whole family. So that we are still prioritizing mom’s self-care because maybe that’s a big part of your mission in your business. But we are incorporating the kid in it, right? So, this is now a product that is for the kids, and mom can kind of justify it, but it’s also for mom, right? We could also build a whole campaign to remind mom that if you skimp on self-care, you lose patients faster. And here’s a coupon. So, you can still afford your self-care, right? We can be thinking about how we change our marketing to deal with this situation.

Katja (24:57):
We could shift from a more luxury product and positioning of the product for mom to a more essential product for mom. So, instead of self-care, it is a staying healthy when you’re not getting enough sleep care, right? The marketing around self-care, that’s a luxury word. It’s a treat kind of word, even though self-care should be available to all people all the time. But that’s not how it is in our society. But if you shift your positioning to this will help you stay healthy because you are working too hard right now, that sounds more essential, right? Now obviously we want to make sure the product also will do that. Really, we’re not going to just false market stuff. We want to make sure that the product really will. And so it might mean that you redesign your product, or that you are emphasizing a different product. Maybe your top seller was this luxury self-care product. But now your top seller is going to shift to this other more general healthcare product. That’s no problem with that. There’s no problem with that. Okay. We may shift from a product that is for mom to a product that is for the whole family, either by changing the actual product or by changing the positioning of the original product. So, if we change the product itself, it might be something like you trusted me for luxury self-care. Now trust me when the rubber meets the road to help care for your family, something like that. Or if we’re changing the positioning of the original product, then this luxury self-care is not just for you, it’s for the whole family maybe.

Katja (26:42):
All right. Now we also could shift our marketing. We know who the customer is, but we could be marketing to dads, or spouses, or supporting parental units, whoever. And say, for marketing to dads, your wife is giving her all for the kids and needs you to help her find resources for self-care. Right? Now, that’s kind of sexist. But it’s also true. A partner should help make sure that we have what we need to care for ourselves. Getting time for self-care is part of parenting. And so if you are in a parenting team, making sure that each member of the team has time for self-care and has the energy that they need to put into the care of the kids, that’s important, right? So, okay, yeah. There’s some gender role stuff going on with that little marketing that I mentioned. But also sometimes our customers are stuck in the gender roles, or they choose them. They feel comfortable in them. So, it’s not always bad to reflect that if you want them to relate to what you’re saying. It really depends on who you’re talking to. The message is still the same. Hey, supporting parent. You need to make sure that the primary parent, the person who’s taking on the primary duties of taking care of the kids, is also getting self-care. My product can help with that, right? The way you word it is going to be different for different demographics. Again, do you see why it’s so important? We’ve got to really know who we’re talking to. Because the way we say it is going to be really different for different people.

Katja (28:31):
Okay. But at any rate, shifting that marketing to dads instead of the end user of the product – the moms – is a strategy. And also positioning your product or service as a replacement for something else that’s out of the budget. Like getting a massage or taking a vacation might be more expensive than your product or service. And so you can position your product or service as a replacement for that more expensive thing. Like if you’re cutting back on vacation because the budget’s getting tight, why not have a spa vacation at home? Try our spa in a box. It’s all the relaxation of a vacation without the big price tag. You know, whatever. We could brainstorm a million different ideas on that, but these are some examples to get you started.

The Starting Point of Your Plan

Katja (29:21):
All right. So, this is the starting point. And again, this was just one leg of examples here. We could do this whole thing all over again with another set of examples that is okay, you have a luxury product that you target to moms that is self-care for busy moms. And now we want to find another demographic who will like that product. And so we can go through the whole brainstorming process. Having identified the demographic, we can go through that whole brainstorming process about the product in your product line that they will resonate most with, that they would value the most, and how to position that to them exactly the same as we did this exercise. And don’t worry, there is more to come on all of this. But for right now, let’s not go any further, and let’s really think through these ideas. So, what we’re looking at here is what is the work you do and the work you don’t do? Who do you do that work for? Who is your customer? And then take it a little further. When that customer is short on money, they will cut this out of her budget, and instead they will focus on that. Here’s my product and service. Here’s how I usually position it. Or if you aren’t selling yet, but you’re planning, here’s how I have been planning to position it. And then here are some ideas to make sure that my product or service is not something that she will cut when the budget gets tight.

Katja (31:06):
Now, if you have trouble with any of those answers, make a note and keep going. Fill in as much of it as you can. But I’ll tell you. If it is hard for you to imagine what this person would cut out to their budget or to imagine how you could provide information, education, products, services that are valuable to them, even when their money is tight. If those things are hard for you to imagine, that means that you don’t have enough detail in your customer profile. It’s really, really important to be super, super detailed. That’s why in the worksheets that I have, there are like 70 million questions for you to answer. And yeah, you can skip a couple. If there’s some that don’t seem relevant to you, that’s not a problem. But really imagining in-depth all those different answers is what’s going to help you get to know this person so well that you’re going to be able to imagine the answers to these questions. Which are what you really need to know, right? The what would she spend her money on when she doesn’t have very much money?

Katja (32:24):
Now, we can certainly brainstorm more ideas than this, and we will. This one example was like one pillar of shifting for a demographic that already exists. Now, we can do this over each demographic that you have, each type of customer that you have. We can repeat this process. But we have a parallel process that is going to help you also identify new customers as well. It’s very similar, but we’re going to be brainstorming instead about new markets. So, let’s stop here for this moment and work with this material a little while first before we try to add another line in our flow chart. That’ll come in a subsequent episode. So, for now, get to work on this. And if you want more help, if you need more support, get in the Herbal Business program. That is where you’re going to find all of these detailed worksheets, all of the support. You can literally send your stuff to me. I will go through it. I will point out oh, did you think about this? Oh, what about that? You can put it in our private student study group for the Business program. It’s just the business students in this study group, and everybody can help each other. You may find people in the study group who are your demographic actually. And they could be helping you with all the background information that you no longer have to imagine because there’s somebody in your demographic in the group. And that can be so helpful. So, don’t be out there trying to do this stuff by yourself. It’s so frustrating. It’s so lonely to try to run a business alone. Get in the Herbal Business program. There’s a link in the show notes. If you don’t, if you’re not sure, if you have questions. If you can’t get to the link in the show notes, whatever else, send me an email to info@commonwealthherbs.com, and I will help you. Okay, that’s it for this episode. This is a really big first step actually. It’s kind of the first and second and third steps in thinking about disaster proofing your business. So, take some time with this. Don’t try to do it all in one chunk. Listen to this a few times. Work through it, and we’ll go from there. Bye bye.