We recently connected with Maggie Drayton and have shared our conversation below.

Maggie, appreciate you joining us today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

I currently have three businesses: one is my farm, Rebel Farms; one is my coaching business, “Scattered to Simple”; and one is my women’s entrepreneurship group, which falls under my membership business called “Small Business Sisterhood.” All of these ideas came about rather spiritually and organically.

The farm was a passion project that my husband and I had been working on for a few years. We had been transforming our house into an edible oasis. Using permaculture techniques and design principles, we began transforming our 1/3 of an acre piece of land into something really special. As we began documenting our life and work on Instagram, we began to get traction. People were asking us a lot of questions and loving the work that we were doing, the family we were building, and the community we are building. We began getting clients reaching out wanting this work done for them, and we have been doing it ever since—figuring out ways to serve and bring value to our clients and communities on three different levels: education, design, and implementation.

Scattered to Simple is my coaching business. I had always been a life and business mentor to women. When I had my baby in 2022 and when I was preparing for his arrival, my mind was all over the place. I had always succeeded in spite of my ADHD, and now I could not run from it. I had new businesses to create and manage and a baby on the way, and I needed things to change. That is when I started to research simplicity. I found podcasts like The Minimalists, read books like Essentialism, and began watching YouTube decluttering videos. My life began to change—it was like something clicked. I began to see everything through the lens of minimalism and simplicity, which is how I came up with my name and my niche.

To be honest though, it took a long time to get here. It took years of making mistakes and moving backwards but always coming back to simplicity. And ALWAYS coming back to decluttering—putting everything through the filter of: Do I need this? Is it bringing me value? And if this spontaneously combusted, would I replace it? This was having such a profound effect on my life that I began to apply it to my business and to other people’s businesses. Then I started to see the through-lines of simplicity in all the great business books. And so Scattered to Simple was born and is continuing to develop.

Lastly, I created my membership because I began interviewing female entrepreneurs to see what they needed. I was developing a course for Scattered to Simple and I found out instead that all of my women had something in common: “They felt like they were doing their business alone.” Making decisions in a vacuum without a ton of support from people who really understood them and understood the unique struggles of being a female entrepreneur.

I love the interview technique and always build businesses this way—the client-based approach. Ask the clients what they need. Don’t create something for them; create something with them, and they will be clients for a long time and it will be hard for them to say no to your product because you created it for them. I still definitely don’t have this all figured out and I am humbled and learning all the time, especially as businesses go more and more online and social media driven.

Maggie, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I’m Maggie Drayton—business coach, farmer, and a born rebel.

I co-run Rebel Farms with my husband in New Smyrna Beach, Florida, where we turn backyards and empty lots into lush, edible ecosystems. We install food forests, raised-bed gardens, and fruit tree systems that actually work in our climate (Zone 9b). We’re farmers at heart, permaculturists by trade, and community builders by intention. Our clients are people who want to feel more connected to the land. We serve our clients on 3 main levels. We educate – We offer free tours and always answer any questions that come to us. 2. We design food forests and gardens for the DIYers. We do free consults and reccomendations, and for a fee we design a plan that will work for your land. We are also a nursery and can provide trees and plants that we propogate ourselves or get from our tristed grpwers all over the state. 3. We install. Every week we are at new houses and businesses all over the county food forests and botanical gardens for the true enthusiasts that need a little extra help.

On the other side of my work is Scattered to Simple™, a business coaching program and sisterhood designed for women who feel like they’re trying to start a business with 47 tabs open in their brain. It’s a mix of clarity, structure, nervous system care, and strategy. We declutter the chaos—mental, emotional, and logistical—so they can finally start or grow their work in the world in a way that actually feels doable.

What ties both sides of my work together is a belief that we’re all trying to come back to what’s real: food, purpose, connection, land, simplicity. I help people remember that.

I’m not the flashiest. I’m not interested in hustle culture or performative perfection. I’m building slow, deep, lasting things. What sets me apart is the integrity I bring to every project—whether I’m installing a fruit tree or coaching someone through a breakdown in their business. I don’t offer cookie-cutter solutions. I listen deeply, I get my hands dirty, and I help people build systems that feel like theirs.

What I’m most proud of? The women who walk away from our work together standing taller, clearer, and softer. The clients who harvest their first papaya. The families eating out of their backyard instead of stressing at the grocery store. And the community we’re slowly building—rebellious and rooted.

If you remember anything about me or my work, let it be this: it’s possible to grow something beautiful from a place that once felt chaotic. Whether it’s a garden or a business—you can start Simple and right where you are.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

Hurricane Ian arrived in 2022 like an unwelcome guest who refused to leave. We were told this storm might not hit us directly, that we were going to be okay. Instead, we watched the biggest, widest-spreading hurricane settle over us for five endless days, dropping more rain than I had ever witnessed in my life. Our power disappeared, communication severed. We watched the canals surrender and the water levels climb—slowly, relentlessly, inch by devastating inch—until we found ourselves trapped in our own sanctuary.

I was 38 weeks pregnant, days away from meeting our child. We had been preparing for new life, never imagining we were simultaneously watching our farm die. As the floodwaters crept higher, my husband and I chose to slow dance to ridiculous pop country songs instead of hunting for weather reports on the crackling radio. Sometimes you have to choose joy in the eye of the storm.

The month that followed was a masterclass in resilience. We cleaned mud from everything we owned. We called everyone we knew. We leaned hard into our community and watched them lean back. We raised money from strangers who became friends. We witnessed the water finally recede, taking with it years of careful cultivation, leaving behind the skeletal remains of our dreams.

But we kept going. We rebuilt with the fierce urgency of people who understand that time doesn’t wait for perfect conditions. I was able to have my baby at home exactly as we had planned, just two weeks later. Oh, and it was a 40-hour labor—because apparently, we hadn’t been tested enough.
That fire that ignited in us—to rebuild what was lost, to claim the birth we wanted, to refuse surrender—that same fire powers everything we do now in business and community. Entrepreneurial work is fundamentally about this: the willingness to slow dance while the world floods around you, knowing that morning always comes, and you’ll be the one to build what rises from the wreckage.

What’s been the most effective strategy for growing your clientele?

Before I talk about social media, I have to say this: the best way to get clients is to ask for clients. So many entrepreneurs want to skip this step. They want to build all the things without selling to clients first, and this is backward. You have to find the clients and start working with them first—figuring out what they want, how they work, and providing value. Always providing value.

The power of social media has been transformative for both the farm and the coaching practice, but not in the way most people think. We don’t use these platforms to showcase perfection—we use them to tell authentic stories. I’m heavily engaged in these spaces and currently in the process of figuring out how to use all the tools and integrations these platforms provide to grow our business organically.

I believe it’s important to capture clients where they are, but I’m also focused on building our email list so we can always be talking directly to our people. For now, though, we’re focusing on social media by telling real, unfiltered stories. The name of the game is speaking your truth with your own authentic voice and not letting perfectionism get in the way of sharing your message.

I’m always the one to hop on social media to talk about something I’m thinking, feeling, or noticing—a new awareness, a new story—so that our audiences feel like they know us and can trust us. I’m never going on there to show perfectly curated content. We talk about the struggles, the mistakes, where we’re still learning, and I think that humanness is what connects our audience to us.

For the farm, we always have really beautiful content from the land to post, as well as intense messages to share about the value of farming, hands in the dirt, community, local politics. I think your audience should know they can rely on you for something meaningful when they show up to your space.

But here’s the key: you have to be doing it in a way that you are using call to actions and telling people how they can find you and start working with you. Always be looking for clients and asking to work with people. The strategy isn’t complicated—it’s about consistency in showing up as yourself, sharing what matters to you, and trusting that the right people will be drawn to that authenticity.

Contact Info:

• Website: http://www.rebelfarms.org, http://www.scatteredtosimple.com, https://small-business-sisterhood.my.canva.site/
• Instagram: @rebelfarmsflorida @scattered_to_simple
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/people/REBEL-FARMS/100091342720404/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@Scattered_to_Simple
• Other: not really that impressed by my youtube yet. i just used it to get started and to put up information for my membership, and i have a linked in but definitely need to update it. i can email you the updated version when I finish.

Image Credits

Thicker than Water Photography
Philomena Anderson