The corporate world and my little kitchen garden couldn’t have felt more disconnected from one another. Or so I thought.
Over the last decade, I’ve been trying to reconcile my passions and desires to both be a boss babe and conquer the corporate world in marketing and advertising and also spend as much time as possible outside nurturing my vegetable garden and cooking and baking delicious homemade goodies.
For years, I’ve felt stretched at the seams trying to be both, but heaven forbid, ever at the same time!
Two identities that could never be seen in the same place at the same time. On one side, I sat in a conference room wearing a blazer and trendy jeans and spoke of strategy, analytics, and buyer’s journeys. On the other, I walked barefoot in the grass of my backyard, whispering to the bees to “drink up babies!”
I grappled with how I could ever be one and the same AND make a living doing so.
Enter the philosophy of permaculture and homesteading.
With homesteading, we typically think of a land steward who tends to a rural plot somewhere out in the rolling hills. And with permaculture, though a very new concept and apparently not commonly talked about, we may think strictly of regenerative agriculture tools for better farming land.
But hidden within both these practices and ways of life sits the missing link I had been searching for for years!
At the root of both being a homesteader and using permaculture practices is ingenuity and an entrepreneurial spirit. Creating something from nothing, using the resources you have, and developing systems that can self-sustain themselves in spite of the market or environmental conditions! Ah-ha!
Not to mention that a key aspect of being a homesteader is often selling your homemade & homegrown products at your local farmers market.
There we are.
While I may have stumbled into the farmers’ markets through the door of entrepreneurship with my food business I launched while finishing grad school, I eventually was able to see what was actually there all along. Rows of entrepreneurs who run family or solopreneur businesses who are dedicated to making a life of their own.
Digging deeper, I found myself surrounded by entrepreneurial souls setting up their tents on a daily or weekly basis to sell products that grew or made themselves. How cool is that?!
After burning out from the corporate circus, I knew I never wanted to return to an office with a big CEO who’s hardly in tune with their people with the boots on the ground. That world is literally littered with red tape and mis-prioritization of resources that could actually bring growth and success.
I know what some people might be thinking… business is WAY more complex than that. Completely, of course it is!! Business is incredibly complex! Yet, at the same time, it’s super simple if you know how to break it down into its littlest bits.
And that’s the beauty of my unique path and how I’ve wandered to exactly where I am now. With my blue ocean of business knowledge and my deep love for good food and growing it myself, I have the opportunity to share what I know and what I see.
And the best part is, I see a world that’s entrepreneurial. I see opportunities for more people to continue stepping away from the way businesses used to run and creating businesses of their own. Businesses that both fit into a lifestyle of our choosing and that also support ourselves and our families, so that we can truly live a more self-reliant life.
What I’m finding is that it is possible to be both a business-savvy baddie, and also be deeply in tune with nature and our food. You can be whatever unique combination of things you choose. And the resources exist in the world to support you in it.
So if you’re like me, and you’re trying to find the intersection of the career you’ve built and the life you want, I promise, it’s there, babe.
And if you’ve specifically been feeling the call to get in touch with your food source, start making more of your own food at home, navigating farmers’ markets, or even starting a small business where you can join your local economy, I invite you to join me on this journey.
I believe we can keep our modern lifestyles in the city or suburbs AND relearn the ways of cultivating our homes and providing for ourselves and our families.
All the resources we’ve ever needed are here, and I’m so excited to share how I’m learning to take these old practices and make them usable in our modern world.
With that, we can all find ways to grow ourselves and our entrepreneurial souls!