"It's my first time..." 9 Steps to Making Your Experience Great, Even When You’re a Beginner
It’s 9am Thursday. I’m waiting in the queue to get into the Flemmington show grounds to unload my van full of plants, astro-turf, pots, signage and fairy garden furniture.
The past two months have been focused on this moment.
From the time I was invited to exhibit at the Better Homes & Gardens LIVE expo I’ve been thinking about the logistics of what I’m going to do, how to hang curtains on the walls without using nails or staples, how to create a display that conveys the rather new concept of learning gardening through online courses, not to mention how to get everything down to Melbourne from my home on the Sunshine Coast 2000 kilometers away. Including my puppy dog and me.
So when I pull up at the gate and the traffic director asks where my fluro vest is, a compulsory safety precaution to make sure trucks don’t run over me during the install, I explain I didn’t realise I needed one.
“Turn around and go home then,” he says dryly, kind of smiling. “I’ve been waiting to say that to someone all morning.”
I imagine he’s joking. But he walks off and doesn’t return except to say I’m blocking his traffic and that’s exactly what he wants me to do.
My eyes begin to sting and while my immediate response is to think, “Please don’t cry Nic, not here with all the workmen around,” I don’t resist the sensations of overwhelm and instead allow the anxiety to move through my body. Eventually another man walks up.
“You can just park over there, behind that truck, and go over to the entrance. They are selling fluro vests for $5.”
“Thank you,” I say, swallowing hard, ever so grateful for his kindness.
I manoeuvre my Toyota Hiace between two semi-trailers.
This is my first time having a stall at an expo and all the activity is eye-opening. Forklifts scurry across the asphalt lifting pallets piled high with boxes, men unpack floor tiles and lay them beneath jacked up motorhomes, gypsy caravans trundle past and form a line of what will be food stalls tomorrow.
I find a board on wheels with a tow rope and begin unloading my planter boxes, pot plants and tools. It’s heavy but I already feel out of place and just want to unload the van and move it before someone complains I’m taking up their space.
“You should go over and ask if they have a spare pallet and trolly,” the kind traffic director tells me on my third load. “I’m a therapist and you’ll strain your leg muscles doing it that way. Just go over and ask if they have any spare.”
But I’m too shy. So I finish unloading the hard way and get to work putting everything together in the stall. It takes all day. Which I thought it would.
A few times while making decisions and putting things together I felt sudden panic, accompanied by thoughts of “What am I doing? How do I hang the signage? What if I do something wrong? I don’t want to look like a fool.”
Then I remember there’s no perfect way to do anything in life, and it’s all a process and an adventure in learning. So I make another executive decision and hang the signs and then move them and hang them again. Every choice and action led to finding what worked and suited the stall.
Here are 9 steps I’ve found useful when doing something new, whether it’s growing a garden, having a stall at an expo, painting a canvas or renovating your home.
You can follow these steps too to help iron out the ‘newbie nerves’ and ‘beginner jitters’.
#1. Get clear on WHY you want to do what you’re setting out to do
If you’re making a garden ask yourself why… Do you want it to:
Save you money?
Be a sanctuary where you can unwind after work?
Get your children outside and interacting with nature?
Provide exotic foods you wouldn’t find at the supermarket?
Save you time in the kitchen by making it easier to cook something fresh & delicious?
Each of those reasons WHY will influence how your garden takes shape.
Just as knowing I wanted to have a stall so I could meet and connect with new Sprouters influenced what I did and how I set up my stall at the expo. It meant I could forge ahead even when I felt out of place and uncertain.
#2. Check out what people have done before you
I spent hours on Google looking for images of garden expos and gathering ideas for my first stall. We don’t have to reinvent the wheel when we are beginning something that’s new for us. Other people will have done it before.
When I was getting ready to make a veggie garden and grow my own food, I visited as many gardens as I could. I joined Permaculture groups, community gardens and went to open garden days where we were honoured with tours of how other gardeners had done it. I learnt what worked and what didn’t before I began, and that saved me so much time, disappointment and mess ups.
#3. Learn from an expert with more experience
Getting a coach, teacher or trainer will not only save your time, money and effort, it will also maximise your results with ideas, tips and tricks you wouldn’t have even known existed.
During the lead-up to the expo, I was blessed with tremendously supportive coaching from Nicole Rowan-Holt (0430 342 957) who’s a product marketing expert and intuitive business coach. She helped me prepare by putting together a media kit, creating an eye-catching children’s garden and told me something I hadn’t even considered, which was forming relationships with other like-minded businesses and brands at the expo.
She reminded me the value of forming community.
In my garden, I learnt all I could from experienced organic gardeners by taking courses, attending workshops and volunteering to help set up a garden at a primary school before I lifted a finger at my place. Those experiences gave me the tools I needed to confidently design a garden that worked for me and suited my climate.
If you’re looking for help with your veggie patch or potted garden, I’ve collated all that experience into online gardening courses where you can go step-by-step through my fun gardening systems in your own time at home.
#4. Translate your vision into a simple design
Just like having a design is important for your garden, it was imperative for my stall too. Fiona Jefferies from Diva Works kindly drew up this sketch after I shared what I wanted to stall to do. She has tonnes of experience with trade shows and and she made it so easy for me to have a clear picture of what I was creating.
Not only did having a design set my mind at ease, it also enabled me to take the following steps which were equally important…
#5. Gather your resources
Once you have a clear idea of where you’re going and what you’re creating, you will know what resources you need to gather to make it happen. Whether it’s compost and mulch, or double-sided tape, astro-turf and signage, gathering your resources is often the most time-consuming process but necessary if you’re going to translate your design into reality.
#6. Put it all together
This is where the rubber hits the road and all the resources you’ve gathered are hung, laid, painted, installed, or layered to form your design. There are always things that happen during this step that need attention, but you can wing it while in the process by following your broad design and remembering what you’re wanting to achieve.
#7. Don’t listen to the nay-sayers
If you’re unfortunate enough to have someone bombard you with the challenges, problems, or reasons why you shouldn’t be doing what you’re doing, take stock of where they’re coming from and the value of their experience.
If they’re a bored traffic attendant who hasn’t run their own business they probably won’t understand the logistics of putting together a stall from another state for the first time. Or if they are a gardener who hasn’t studied organic principles, they won’t understand the systems you can use to set your garden on auto-pilot and use nature’s natural pest-defense systems to do most of the work for you.
Hold fast to what you’ve learnt from those who’ve gone before you. Find support in your own community.
#8. If something goes ‘wrong’ remember your WHY
Ok, so your favourite herb dies. The automatic irrigation fails while you’re on holiday. Caterpillars munch on your broccoli. A possum decapitates your potted garden.
Or the signs blow off your stall walls. You lock your keys in the car on the first day of the expo (yes, I did this ;P). You run out of business cards while hundreds of people attend your stall. Or a traffic attendant tells you to go home.
That’s life.
We can’t control everything.
However we CAN learn how to navigate through and around these things, so we’re better equipped next time. But only if we hold onto our WHY firmly enough so we’re not put off and discouraged beyond repair.
Remember you’re growing a garden so your kids know where tomatoes come from. You’re helping them form a healthy connection with their food.
Remember you’ve planted herbs in pots so it’s easy to throw together a meal at the end of the day when you’re in need of simple nourishing flavour.
Remember how you desire somewhere to let your mind wander as you gaze at the lemon tree blossoms after a day staring at the computer screen, where you can relax while you sip a glass of wine.
Growing a garden is not about impressing the neighbours. Or getting it all done right. It’s about finding what works for you and supports the lifestyle you value.
#9. Celebrate where you’ve come from & what you’ve achieved
While the process is evolving and when it’s all done, take a moment to reflect and celebrate.
Not many years ago I was living in a rental property wondering how to stop the caterpillars eating all my pot plants. My gut felt like it was on fire whenever I ate anything sprayed with pesticides. I felt completely out of my depth when it came to making an organic veggie patch from scratch and had hallucinations of spending the rest of my life pulling weeds and watering in order to be able to eat home-grown food.
And yet now, my garden supplies about 70% of my fresh food, my gut has healed and I spend less than one afternoon every two months actually doing any work in the garden. Yes, it’s true.
It’s worth celebrating where we’ve come from and what we’ve achieved. We’re all beginners the first time around. It’s inevitable. It’s in those first stages where we get to choose whether we embrace those uncomfortable and scary moments when we don’t feel sure about what we’re doing. And those choices determine the breadth, depth and quality of our lives in the long run.
Summing up…
Each time we do something it gets easier. We learn what works for us. And we stream-line the process.
Taking the show down was SO much easier than putting it up. I headed straight for the entrance and borrowed a pallet and a trolly. I wore my fluro vest and accepted help from my new friends in the neighbouring stalls. I was out of the carpark and enjoying a glass of wine with my uncle in less than two and a half hours.
Decide what you want in your garden or life Sprouter, then jump in and begin.
I’m cheering you on, for sure.
Nicola xx