We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Monique Allen. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Monique below.
Monique, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Being a business owner can be really hard sometimes. It’s rewarding, but most business owners we’ve spoken sometimes think about what it would have been like to have had a regular job instead. Have you ever wondered that yourself? Maybe you can talk to us about a time when you felt this way?
I have been a business owner from the beginning, and yet I have always known that my inspiration and motivation come from being accountable to others and to a task or mission greater than me. This can be both an accelerator and a break when owning a business.
At 18, I took my first step into the landscape industry and never looked back. I had no idea that 40 years later, I would be deeply embedded in the industry as a business owner, employer, trailblazer, and thought leader. Over those 4 decades, I have had many opportunities to succeed and fail. There have been times when throwing in the towel seemed like the only sane option. And yet… I haven’t done it yet.
My business has survived several economic and political upheavals—the Great Recession and the COVID-19 pandemic were two significant events that rocked the ground beneath many small businesses. It’s hard to express how isolating it is to own a small business, especially one that employs teams of people to accomplish its work.
Fear of failure – personal failure – is only a tiny aspect of what pioneering a mission threatens. When failure impacts the lives of the people you employ, the pressure is so crushing that the mere effort to get out of bed and put one foot in front of the other feels daunting. What I’ve learned over the years is that entrepreneurship is a choice you must make every day, one that at times you must lean into with the force of your will, but more notably, with the wholeness of your heart.
As a business coach working with owners at a crossroads in their entrepreneurial journey, I remind them of the value of passion as rocket fuel that can launch an idea and sustain it through the breakthrough period of business development, but not a sustaining source to keep the ship running. For that, they must move to a new fuel source, one that can support a slow burn that lasts. This is where the heart comes in.
I lost heart in the Great Recession; it was a defeating moment to watch the revenue levels I’d worked so hard to gain slide away. Within two years, our topline revenue was slashed in half. I had been in business for decades, and I knew what I was doing, yet within a few years, the playing field shifted beneath me. As much as I tried to pivot, I couldn’t do it fast enough.
It was in 2010 that I hired my first business coach. It was a lot of money to invest when we had a problem with revenue, but I chose this course of action with a clear head. I knew I could work for anyone in any industry, bring my business acumen, willpower, and heart to the table, and make great strides in growing their business. But I wasn’t ready to give up. I thought maybe someone out there knows something I don’t. Perhaps someone from the outside who isn’t emotionally entangled in my business can show me something I’m not seeing. Lo and behold, it was the right move. It was as though a flood light was switched on, illuminating all the blindspots that kept me small and stuck. I’ve never looked back! We grew over thirty percent for three years to surpass our pre-recession levels.
Then, a decade later, the pandemic hit. It was a surprise for everyone, for sure, and small businesses were crushed by the fear and mayhem of the event. Being responsible now for the health and well-being of my staff in such a profound way felt like it would take my legs out from under me. Unlike so many people who were able to hunker down at home and step back from the hustle of work and living in community, I never rested, stayed home, never once took my foot off the gas. The landscape industry just ramped up with each passing month as people craved projects for their homes and lined up for service.
No one would have blamed or shamed me for quitting the work after that. Businesses were shuttering left and right. I thought about how this could be my out, my final leap into something new, yet I soldiered on. And something incredible happened: I began to understand that my role as a business owner who employs other humans was, in fact, the most important thing I could accomplish as an entrepreneur.
The work of business building itself was my calling. It didn’t take away from landscape development or business coaching but amplified it. I took the title Gardener of People and set out to operate with a Triple-Bottom-Line mindset. My mission became to service and support businesses (mine included) that cared for the Planet, People, and Profits. These three together made for a heart-centered mission that I now know will carry me through whatever the economy or politics can throw at me.
Monique, 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?
As a high school grad, I was floundering, unsure of what to do next. I was working at a clothing store and going to a community college for business, and, quite frankly, I was bored. A new friend asked me to spread mulch with his landscape team on a Saturday, and working outside sounded fun, so I agreed. I fell in love with the work and never looked back. It was as simple as that. I stumbled upon a vocation that lit up my soul, and I started following the threads one by one as they were presented to me.
I tell a detailed story of my entry to this work in my book, STOP Landscaping, START Life-Scaping. It is part memoir and part manifesto. It is a story of a trade’s evolution and a person’s becoming that spans decades. I became more legible to myself through the work of garden-making and learned that Nature is a force to respect and collaborate with, not to subjugate. Over time, I realized that business-making was a similar endeavor and, on some levels, equally complex because of the human component.
The Garden Continuum, Inc. is a Massachusetts-based landscape design, build, fine gardening, and decor company. We specialize in regenerative practices that support our signature Life-Scape™ method. The tenants of this method are that our landscape projects seek to bring together Organization, Health, and Wow Factor into each property, which we are invited to transform and manage. This very simple trio supports a multi-million dollar company, 25 employees, many vendors and contractors, and acres of land that support and benefit our environment.
We are not your typical landscape company. We are ecologically conscious and devoted to both the planet and her people. There is no value in profits that strip the earth and disrespect humanity. The landscape trade has notoriously made the mistake of trying to control nature and consume the people who do the hard labor necessary to work the land. I don’t think the industry set out to do either, but it was born in a time when Nature was still considered controllable and the workforce was to be shoehorned into manageable containers. This is unacceptable to me as an entrepreneur, so while our work aligns with many other excellent ecological designers and gardeners, what sets us apart from them and many other businesses is how we care for our staff.
We provide exceptional service uniquely articulated through our Life-Scape™ method. We love our landscapes, delight our clientele, and support our community and environment every day. Through our partnership, our clients fall in love with their land and become more connected to Nature. Being connected to Nature has been scientifically proven to improve quality of life. That is our goal.
At the same time, we support our employees’ learning a valuable trade, enjoying well-rounded compensation, and participating in an organization that respects and values their contribution. Humans spend most of their lives at work, which can literally be the facet of living that makes or breaks one’s sense of self. At The Garden Continuum, the well-being of our staff is front and center to our Life-Scape™ mission.
As the Lifescape Coach, my work focuses on assisting other small business owners to focus on their craft and their business mission in a similar way. For those who want to employ triple-bottom-line thinking and endeavor to regain some time, freedom, and financial success, my coaching philosophy and decades of experience as an entrepreneur support them as they evolve their businesses.
Alright – let’s talk about marketing or sales – do you have any fun stories about a risk you’ve taken or something else exciting on the sales and marketing side?
In 2007, I was ready to update my website, which had first launched in 2000. I had heard of HubSpot, a Boston start-up, and as a dedicated consumer of local business wares, it was a perfect fit. I adopted the platform, made a website, and kept on doing business.
I worked with several marketing agencies through the platform that were not locally based and woke up one day feeling very disillusioned about my marketing. HubSpot started a monthly Boston meetup event, and I decided to find a local partner to develop my new website.
I settled in for the presentation in the front row because I’m a geek like that. The information was inspiring, and I was all fired up. At the end, I went up to the speaker to ask him how I could find a local partner, and he pointed next to me and said, “This is your guy right here.” Apparently, also a front-row geek, Dave Orrechio of Bristol Strategy, had been sitting next to me for the entire presentation.
We set a meeting and I hired him. It was more money than I had ever spent on marketing in my life. I was both terrified and exhilarated. He was brilliant and energetic and so into my business mission. He helped me completely transform how we generated and nurtured leads. He got us to automate most of the process and saved me so much time as an owner. Yes, it was and is expensive, but it is worth it.
Through this experience, I learned that marketing is not simply an expense but an investment in your growth and sustainability as a business. You get what you put into marketing, and if you treat it like something you hate (because it’s just not your jam), you will struggle to make ends meet when and if we have any economic or political upheavals that rock your prospect pool.
Additionally, I learned that as an entrepreneur, you will make decisions that other people will disagree with. They may do so loudly, which can rock your resolve. You may get pushback from staff and also from family and friends. This can be brutal emotionally and extremely hard to manage mentally.
Investing in my business has been fraught with the opinions of others not in the same arena as me. If you are taking a risk (part of being an entrepreneur), you need to lean into the guidance of people swimming in the same waters. Your best support will come from participating in associations, working with a mastermind, and being supported by a business coach (who’s done the work of building a business). And it’s usually a combination of these things. Do not go home and ask your spouse for advice. Please don’t go out for drinks with friends thinking they can help you. As a business owner, you must make some risky decisions. Your best support will always come from fellow entrepreneurs whom you respect.
We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?
I had believed that I needed to build a company around the demands of employees. This idea seemed right at the time, but it slowly drained my will to lead and work. My employees weren’t unified, so I was being pulled in multiple directions at once. My enthusiasm and motivation were being sucked dry by the conflicting demands of employees.
I don’t know where this lesson came from. Maybe it was something between the adages “the customer is always right” and “employers are bad.” I wanted to make everyone happy. As a woman, I’m sure I was also under the cultural pressure to be the caretaker and nurturer of everyone in my organization, from clients to employees.
Around 2015, everything changed. An employee left to start their own business and poached several key employees. The injustice of it hit me hard and I realized that building an organization around anyone other than me was a huge mistake. This realization did not make me a self-absorbed business owner; on the contrary, I became a far more directed and compassionate employer.
I stopped trying to be who I thought I should be and focused on the original idea for my business. I mapped my journey from those early years to where I was at that point, including the financial trajectory. I started to see a pattern of ebb and flow in my growth as a person and professional. Little by little, I came to understand what was most important to me. This helped me to formulate the foundation for the Life-Scape™ method, which changed everything. Now, I knew who I was as an entrepreneur. My job now was to attract the right clients and employees to this mission. We naturally found one another and were in alignment.
The culture at The Garden Continuum is natural to me as the leader, and that attracts people who want to be in that kind of environment. From there, building systems and policies that support the culture became much simpler. Building an organization that can support people’s livelihoods is hard work, but it is very satisfying to see it all working while also knowing that it feeds my soul.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.thegardencontinuum.com/ https://www.thelifescapecoach.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thegardencontinuum
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheGardenContinuum/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/moniquetgc/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/GardenContinuumINC
