I have cash in my wallet for the first time in years. Cash is an inconvenient and increasingly obscure way to pay. Your coffee can get cold while a confused barista figures out how to make change. Besides, credit cards offer great cash and travel rewards. I have cash because I started selling plants on a table in front of our house. It sounds crazy, and maybe it is, but my tolerant family and I have had great fun with the plant stand. We also gained some valuable lessons and a trickle of passive income.
A side hustle is a way you earn money, on the side, in addition to your regular job. The gig economy has produced many opportunities for side hustles. Download an app and by lunch you could be driving someone to the airport, delivering groceries, or assembling IKEA furniture for money. I am fortunate to have a secure job that meets our needs so I started growing and selling plants as a hobby that morphed into a fun side hustle.
We started the plant stand last year after dividing our elephant ear bulbs (Calocasia spp). Each spring I excavate the large bulbs and remove all the baby bulbs that were produced. Last spring I ended up with 130 babies. I can't throw plants away and I didn't have enough room to plant them or friends to give them to. I put them all in used pots, that I also couldn't throw away, and by mid-summer they were thriving. I grabbed an old end table from the basement and put it on the street with the elephant years and a sign: "$4 each - cash in the mailbox."
It worked! By the end of a weekend we had sold two-dozen plants. My family changed their perception from embarrassed to excited. I started dividing more plants from the yard and from the house. My wife added Venmo to the signs. My kids started helping water the plants. Pretty soon we had sedums, canna lilies, ferns, aloe, inch plants, pothos and others, all listed on the website. Then we added an instagram account to keep customers engaged.
I have an entrepreneurial spirt that started when I was in grade school raking leaves and shoveling snow for neighbors. Since then I have started and ended several money-making ventures from selling dresses and burritos and Grateful Dead shows to a legit home business with a tax ID and everything. It's fun for me to think about business, accounting, and marketing and it's rewarding to see people buy and appreciate what I am selling.
Cutting plants into pieces and watching all those pieces become plants is about as good as it gets for a cheapskate entrepreneur. However, finding four crumpled dollars in the mailbox when we get home from dinner? That is better. Watching entrepreneurial gears turning in the kids' heads. That is better too. The kids are learning that there are infinite ways to earn money in the world with enough effort and creativity. Obviously no one is getting rich, or even making a living, from the plant stand. But it's working and it's scalable. Part of financial independence is having the options and wherewithal to say "F@*k you" to your boss and walk out the door. A side hustle gives you options.
The other great lesson, or really perspective, I've gained from the plant stand is the benefit of income and investment diversification. I spend a lot of time thinking about diversification in our stock portfolio but that has gotten crushed over the past few months. It has been a good distraction to propagate plants and work on the plant stand rather than monitor stocks. Again, the plant stand is not going to compensate for much decline in our stocks but the lesson of having other investments and income is real. Real estate, Airbnb, side hustles, or selling your crap on eBay all diversify your income.
So, is the plant stand a hobby or a hustle? It is both for me. Most people enjoy hobbies like reading or knitting or running but I don't. Every time I get into a new hobby my brain goes immediately to how I can make money from it. I remembered while writing this that my first plant stand was actually in graduate school. I propagated the hostas and ferns in my tiny back yard to make extra money. Oh, how things haven't changed. I'm not greedy it's just that making money gives the hobby purpose and value beyond meditative satisfaction. I could drop the plant stand at any moment. Maybe I'll start whittling penny whistles to sell or making hemp leashes to get a piece of the pet economy. You never know but I have always loved plants and for now this keeps me off the streets and happy with a little extra money for new plants and beer
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