We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jesse Rahimzadeh. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jesse below.

Jesse, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Let’s start with a story that highlights an important way in which your brand diverges from the industry standard.

There are a lot of the differences between standard landscapers and my style of landscaping or land management. Freedom Forest is an edible & ecological landscaping and design company. The focus of my work is to empower homeowners, businesses, and schools to be producers rather than purely consumers. Whether that means creating beautiful spaces that feed people, wildlife, or even a business. On top of creating more productive landscapes, I do not use any synthetic fertilizers or any pesticides, herbicides, or fungicides. The industry standard is to use a different chemical to solve any little problem that crops up. The issue is that these chemicals toxify the soil, poison wildlife, and eventually run off into common waterways and do further damage. The key thing to know is that for most of human history people were very close to where their food came from and that food wasn’t touched by any modern chemical.

Jesse, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I was in college to get a civil engineering degree. One of my roommates started mentioning a few of the crazy practices going on in industrial agriculture. This really lit a fire for me and got me to dive deep into not only the problems, but also possible solutions. Ultimately I was steered toward the practice known as permaculture which is basically a guide on how to live a healthy life without destroying the land base that you depend on for your survival. Fast forward a couple of years, I decided to begin taking on some side jobs designing and installing edible landscapes. This quickly became far more interesting than any work I had done up to that point so I went into this work full time around 2018.
I now design, install, and maintain edible and ecological landscapes for a wide range of clients. I love the “reveal” moment when a customer realizes just how beautiful it can be growing tons of fruits, vegetables, medicine, and of course, flowers.
People often think edible landscaping = a farm. While I have worked with people on larger tracts of land with only production in mind, most projects are actually aesthetics first while including a ton of nutrient dense edibles. All of the work I do avoids chemicals so clients don’t have to worry about the safety of at least a portion of the food they eat.

How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?

I am thankful that I went into this venture with the idea that its okay to start small. So much of what people see in news and social media is huge risky business ventures taking on tons of debt and hoping to turn a profit within 5 or so years. The route I went was to target potential customers on smaller properties which would in turn lead to quite manageable projects. Like any business, there was a learning curve and it was made easier by the slower start. I like to highlight that because in my eyes, there is no bigger source of stress than debt that is constantly accruing interest and the last thing a new business needs is more stress. Business is doing way better at this point and now I can make the leaps and bounds buying equipment and even starting a nursery to supply the best plants for installs.

Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?

I have done a number of marketing strategies; from direct to door flyers to facebook ads. The funny thing is that nothing beats word of mouth and actual face to face conversations at least in my experience. Overall, a willingness to talk about your work with passion is extremely effective. It definitely took a few years to get over the feeling of bragging or being too sales-y but once I did, opportunities really started presenting themselves.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.freedom-forest.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thefreedomforest
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/freedomforestLLC
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJNUQEouCbvBU2LcCeuo7hA