- Hey, what's going on?
I'm Donny Greens,
and I'm about to share with you my five top mistakes
that I've made in the past five years
of being a microgreens farmer.
Not because I wanna reduce my credibility
as microgreens farmer
but because I wanna share these experiences I had with you,
that way you can learn
and not make these mistakes along your microgreens journey.
And if you stay until the end,
I'm actually gonna share a big mistake
I made with my landlord
that resulted in us actually having to go to court,
so stay tuned.
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So I found this awesome quote by Rita Mae Brown,
that goes good decisions come from experience
and experience comes from bad decisions.
I love this, in order to gain experience
you have to make mistakes along the way and screw up, right?
It's kind of just a fact of life
and something that we have to go through to learn.
And luckily I've been doing microgreens business
for over five years now.
So I've made a ton of these bad decisions and mistakes.
I'm going to share with you now the top five mistakes
that I've made in the past five years
so you can avoid them as you grow your microgreens business
giving a cutting edge.
All right, the first big mistake I've made,
was never automating watering.
Watering is something that has to happen every day.
So automating this process will save a lot of time over time
and therefore, a lot of money over time.
Aside from simply the money and time saved
from having automated watering,
it also allows you to have resilience
because you don't have to be there watering
every single morning.
This will give you the opportunity to take a few days off
or maybe even take a vacation.
Now, I'll mention that I did end up buying
all the equipment needed to automate my watering,
but I never actually went ahead and built this system.
I never took action on this.
And I think the main reason for me never taking action
is really just the fear of the unknown.
I've never messed around with hydroponic equipment,
irrigation, pumps,
I've been comfortable watering for multiple years.
And I think this created an internal,
like mental block in my head
because it was something I've never done before.
It's always easier to do something
once you've at least done it once
and you kind of have your head wrapped around it.
Doing something for the first time,
can be very intimidating, it's scary.
And I think this is a problem that a lot of people run into,
but really it's not the greatest excuse
and it's really my own only excuse
for never implementing that system.
I had all the stuff, I just never took action on it,
because I'd never done it before
and that prevented me from doing it and getting it done.
So rest assured as I build out my new farm
I will definitely be implementing automatic watering.
Watering is also the most important part
of the growing process, of growing microgreens.
And it's also where I see the most ever
for microgreens farmers and especially,
people who are just starting to learn how to grow.
Since humans aren't perfect it's another great reason
to automate this part of your business.
The opportunity to reduce or even eliminate the human error
involved in doing the most important process
of the growing cycle, is not something to be overlooked.
And this is something that I've noticed clearly,
and that's why I'm starting off with this as number one.
And also I have a great example of something that happened
at the very end of running my farm in my last space
right before I closed down the farm to move it across town.
There was a miscommunication
that caused a disaster in the farm.
Luckily, I was able to fix the disaster
but here's what happened.
Two of my workers had a miscommunication
and the person who usually does watering
thought that he didn't have to come in and do watering
for the last three or four days that we had to do watering.
So here I am at the very end of the five year
cycle of growing my greens every day,
wanting to finish off the business on a good note,
and then boom, this happens.
So the plants weren't watered for three days
and this would've never happened,
if I had implemented the automated watering system.
All right, the second mistake
I've made in the past five years as a microgreens farmer
is hiring the wrong people and not firing them faster.
People are a lot trickier to deal with,
than plants I will admit.
And that's all the reason why it's so important
to have the right people on your team.
This is why people like Gary V recommend online
to hire fast and fire faster.
Now, this is a great line
that I've learned to be true over the past years,
and it's important to not have an employee
that's not right for the job.
And even more importantly,
you can end up with somebody
coming into your business, a new worker,
that ruins your company culture
and negatively impacts the other workers
that may be doing a great job.
So there was a point where I had a solid team, it was me,
I had my main harvester doing all the harvesting,
I had a girl doing delivery driving
who was also helping me with social media.
And this is exactly when I made the mistake.
My business was growing very quickly at exponential rates
as COVID was coming on.
And I hired somebody
who I thought was going to be my farm manager.
Well, this person didn't end up working out.
And I ended up keeping him around for months.
This made my other workers unhappy
because they felt like I was favoring him,
even though he was the new guy and he was less respectful.
So I probably shouldn't have hired him in the first place
but nevertheless,
I definitely should have hired him much faster.
It was a waste of time, waste of money
and it overall damaged the culture and the relationships
I had with my workers before he had come along.
I will mention that part of the problem here,
was the fact that I never created a good system
for finding new and employees and onboarding them.
If I had a better system in place for hiring new employees,
I would've been in a better position
knowing that I could just find another person,
rather than worrying about
the fact that I wouldn't be able to find somebody else.
Speaking of systems, the third big mistake
that I've made in the past five years
is not having a good system in place
for customer support after onboarding the new customers.
I have a great system for bringing on new customers
when they sign up,
but I don't have a good system for providing them more value
in those first days and weeks after they sign up.
By implementing
something as simple as just like an email sequence
that could have told the new customers
as they're getting their first deliveries,
why these crops are so important to eat
and a bunch of different ways on how to eat them.
I would've been able to increase my customer retention,
reducing my customer drop off.
And probably, would have increased
my average weekly order as well of these customers.
This coincides with the fact that,
I never became an avid user
or eater of these microgreens for myself.
Which would've naturally helped me
in creating some of this content for my customers.
And this is actually why I always recommend
that people start growing microgreens for themselves
and for their families
before they consider doing this as a business,
that way they can learn how to use the product
and better support their customers.
Comment below and tell me one of the mistakes you've made
that's really stood out in your life.
That way we can all learn from that together
and avoid it before it happens to us.
And it only takes a few seconds of your time
to go down there and leave a comment.
That way we can all improve from it.
Go on, go leave one.
The fourth big mistake I've made
as my microgreens farmer is never like truly and deeply
really dialing in my crop cycles.
Although I have beautiful high quality crops
that grow consistently for me week after week,
these crop cycles could totally be dialed in
to make them even more efficient and profitable.
I think it's a good idea in general,
to revisit your crop cycles
every time you move into a new growth space
because the environment
in that growth space will be different.
And therefore, your crops will be growing differently,
and therefore, requiring the need or optimization.
I only did some basic crop testing
when I was running my first farm in my parents' basement.
And I've actually been using the same crop cycles
the same seating rates this whole time since then,
because I got caught up running the business.
And honestly,
probably due to a little bit of laziness as well.
But because of that,
I'm using more space than I need to most likely
and probably making less profits on my products.
I'll also mention here that,
seeds can vary from seed lot to seed lot.
So it's also another their great time
to do some experimentation
every time you get a new lot of seeds in,
because they will potentially be performing differently.
Optimizing crop cycles is actually something
I'm really excited to do in the future
'cause I only did it in my first farm
and not my second and third.
So as I build out my fourth farm
I'm excited to run these experiments,
and really figure out ideal temperatures and seeding rates
and even dial in the crop cycles and change grow times.
I can even experiment with different lighting setups,
I've traditionally used just one light per shelf.
I'm excited to try two lights per shelves on these varieties
and see if that makes any of a difference.
I would imagine that some varieties maybe like P,
could benefit from two lights
and maybe even get higher yields and higher profitability.
And as far as the growth cycles go
like maybe I can grow broccoli
for a whole day less harvest a day earlier
but still get the same yield in quality.
And now it would result
in me being able to use less space in my farm,
using my space more efficient
and having more space on those racks for other crops.
I'm daydreaming and digressing a little bit here,
but optimization is very important
and I'm excited to make YouTube videos
as I do these experiments in a few months
optimizing my business.
And sharing with you the exact results from these tests,
which should make my microgreens business
even more optimized and profitable.
All right, the fifth and last big mistake
I've made in the past five years as microgreens farmer,
involves my landlord and signing contracts
and verbal agreements.
I probably should have realized
that this guy was a bit off,
based on some of our initial interactions.
But I went ahead and rented the space from him anyway
because it was really close,
I needed a new space and it was a very nice space.
The real mistake I made here though, was in trust.
I trusted that this man would do,
what he said he was gonna do
but in reality, he was a compulsive liar and manipulator.
Because of his continuous BS
and failing to deliver upon what he was promised,
I actually stopped paying him at the end of 2021.
So I didn't pay him anything in 2022.
And now I finally left his building
upon his request obviously, at the end of April in 2022.
At this time that I was leaving,
he actually did something called an illegal lockout
where he prevented me from getting my supplies and equipment
out of the building, even though he wanted me to leave.
and I actually had to take him to court over this.
I'm not lying, I'm being serious, we literally had to,
we each got a lawyer
and we literally had to go to the courthouse
and have a hearing.
Luckily, the consensus was in my favor
and I was able to get my stuff out of his building
and finally leave and get away from this guy.
There's a lot to this story
and I'm gonna make a whole video on this,
once the dust has settled a little bit.
But I will leave you with this,
have everything in writing when you do a lease agreement.
Think of anything and everything
that could possibly be needed to have in that agreement.
And don't take anything
that the landlord says verbally as truth.
I consider myself a good person
and I also feel like my honesty and integrity
is through the roof.
So because of this,
I tend to attract people into my life that I can trust
but sometimes a punk will creep in.
And that's exactly what happened with this case,
and I had to deal with it.
And funny enough, I've met a bunch of people
who actually grew up with this guy
and went to school with him,
and they all say the same thing about him,
that he was a punk.
No big deal though, it was a learning experience
and I'm thankful for it because not only did I learn a ton,
but I get to share this experience with you on YouTube.
That way you don't have to experience
the burden of making a bad decision or a mistake like this.
And I think that's amazing.
So now you know, my top five mistakes that I've made
in the past five years of being a microgreens farmer.
But what if you wanna see me making mistakes in real time,
follow me on Instagram where I can share what I'm doing
every day in my stories.
I love sharing the mistakes and screw ups that I make
because personally, I just think it's really funny.
I've always loved being goofy
and laughing at my shortcomings
and it could be a lot of fun for me to tell
and also a lot of fun for people to watch.
So go follow me on Instagram, my handle is @DonnyGreens.
To hear what I'm most proud of in my past five years
of being in microgreens farmer, click the video below
or use the other video to see what supplies and equipment
you need to get started.
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be sure to hit that like button below,
subscribe to my channel
and share this video with anybody you think it may help.
Thanks again, and I'll see you next time.