We were lucky to catch up with Leah Hunt recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Leah thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Can you tell us about a time where you or your team really helped a customer get an amazing result?

Last June in 2024, I was contacted by a building admin for a local business building. She initially sent a form in through my website requesting a quote for their indoor plant upkeep. I was stoked! I had made my website a couple of months prior and hadn’t put any real work into the SEO, so I was excited someone found me through my website.

I immediately searched the building name, “Airport Gardens” and I squealed like my three-year-old does when I tell her she can have ice cream before her dinner. The pictures on Google were beautiful! Big trees indoors with koi ponds throughout the middle and plants around them with big hanging plants on the second and third floors. It was a plant nerd’s dream, and I was that plant nerd.

Before the consultation, Jessie, the building admin, said the owner wanted some more color added, so I searched up some different options of colorful plants I could add. When meeting Jessie at the business building, I knew this place needed some serious reviving. There were mealie bugs on the second and third floor plants. The atrium was more dirt than plants, the dirt that was in there was dead and dry. The only plants that were in there were all the same height and texture, so there was nothing for the eye to hold attention to.

There was so much potential I saw in that atrium though. The building itself was beautiful. It had beautifully stained wood pieces holding the atrium and planters and the skylight ceiling brought in wonderful natural light. It was a mid-century wonderland! The two large ficus trees in the middle towered over the atrium and brought so much living history into the building. I saw what it could be and I hoped to have the opportunity to bring my knowledge of plants into this building and transform it to what it was built to be.

After spending hours on the proposal, getting idea after idea on paper, I sent in the proposal. I held my breath while waiting to hear back and was able to let out a sigh of relief that the proposal was accepted! I got to work and a few months later, the atrium was filled with hundreds of plants. The soil has come back to life as it has been filled with new, living soil that the plants can pull nutrients from. Beneficial bugs are released monthly to control any possible pest species that could have been introduced without harming the fish. Seasonal decorations are scattered throughout the indoor garden throughout the year, marking the changes of season. I have tenants and clients come up to my team members and me all the time complimenting the work we have done at Airport Gardens and how we have brought it back to life.

The owner of the building has been a dream client and amazing to work with. He saw the vision and had the understanding of what it would cost to bring that vision to life and allowed me to do that for him. From what I have gathered, his goal for this business building is to build a community of like-minded business owners who are kind to each other and can have a great experience having their business conducted in a beautiful, live space. I believe we were able to help him achieve that goal by filling the atrium with beautiful plants and taking care of the plants for him.

Leah, 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 own an interiorscape company, which is an indoor plant design and maintenance service business. We connect people living and working indoors to nature through biophilic design principles like indoor live plants, moss walls, living walls, etc. We also maintain the care for the live plants so they remain beautiful and healthy in their spaces.

I started this part of the business in 2023 when someone from my church asked me to put plants into the office he managed and take care of them as well. At the time, I was going to Thailand a couple of times a year to import and sell rare collector plants to people around the US. I had never heard of a company that installed and maintained indoor plants before but I figured I was doing a friend a favor and it was some extra cash, so why not?

Fast forward a year later and I was due to have my third baby. There was no way I was going to Thailand a couple of times a year for these big trips with a newborn, let alone three kids! I didn’t want to stop working with plants because of how much joy they brought me, so I decided to focus more on this local plant business.

I love bringing people joy through plants. I love putting plants into an account that never had real plants in their space and seeing how that space transforms by adding live plants. I recently saw a post on Instagram that said something along the lines of, “living, breathing decorations,” talking about indoor plants. Of course, indoor plants make a difference in your space. They are living and breathing!

People come to us either when their indoor spaces are stagnant and they want to add some life into it or their existing plants aren’t doing well, either from the neglect of the owners themselves or the neglect of the current interiorscape company.

I want potential clients to know that we care about the work we do. We take ownership of every project and care that our work is high quality. I say the best way to get new customers is to do the best job. Every person at Tropical House enjoys that feeling of serving others. Everything we do is for our clients and for the plants.

Are there any books, videos, essays or other resources that have significantly impacted your management and entrepreneurial thinking and philosophy?

Diary of a CEO is hands down my favorite podcast. The host, Steven Bartlett has some great guests on that talk about their business journeys. The entreleadership podcast by Dave Ramsey is also a great resource that I listen to. One thing I love about owning a business is talking to other business owners. It doesn’t matter what field of business they are in, I always learn something new that I can apply to my own business to make it better.

I was referred to a book called Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business by Gino Wickman. That book is hands down the best book to read as a business owner. The idea of getting systems and processes in place to make your product or service repeatable will be good advice for any business owner. That is just one of the topics it has in the book, but the whole book is absolutely fantastic.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

Before I was designing and maintaining indoor plants, I was importing and selling rare collector plants. It was so much work and stress. At first, I was just ordering the import orders via contacting my seller and having them shipped to me. I would then acclimate the plants for at least 4 weeks until they were healthy enough to be shipped. I then began to go directly to the source and would take a couple trips a year for two years. After one of the trips, I had over 500 plants in my home that I had to ship out in the middle of winter. I would go days with little sleep after getting home from being around the world for a couple of weeks. I was constantly on my phone, in contact with people I was selling the plants to as well as posting the plants to Facebook plant groups, and I had two little kids running around with their underwear on their heads or sitting in front of a tv.

As you can see, mention of my kids came last. That wasn’t a coincidence. I knew something had to change. It wasn’t until my third was born and I took a break from getting new clients and selling plants that I got the answer to change I needed. I was able to stop working and just focus on being a mom, something I really had never done since being a mom. It was AMAZING and just the perspective change I needed. My youngest is now almost a year and a half. I am working on building the company, but I have hired someone to do the plant care for me, so most of the work for the business I can do at nights. I do get a babysitter once a week to come over and play with the kids so I can go out and prospect, do consultations, do account management, etc. When the time comes that I need more than a day to do that, I will hire out whatever part of the job I am doing that can go to someone else.

My kids and husband come first. While most people will see that as a setback for my business, I believe that making them the priority will actually help me make better business decisions as I already have seen it do.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://tropicalhouseplantdesign.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tropicalhouseplantdesign/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/tropical-house-indoor-plant-design-maintenance