Welcome to the Herbal Circle Roadmap!

Your vision involves working out what you want to do and matching that with what you can offer to your clients.

This can change over time as your values shift and you build the business that you want to create. 

It's important for us to begin this road map with your vision so that you have a clear idea of where you want to go and create a purpose-driven plan. 

3 Major Realms of Impact

1. Yourself: You can DESIGN what you want your work to look like (do, time, environment, requirements)
2. Your clients: Impact you have, results you bring people, how you help
3. Your business: As you continue your business become its own entity and lives on beyond you.

What do you want to create over the long term?

Don’t think about if it’s possible or practical. Allow yourself to dream.

Action Step:

Allow yourself some time to reflect and dream, then fill out the questions in the Vision worksheet. When you're done, comment on the post in our community with the part of your vision that you are most enticed by!

Before Your Start Setting Goals...

1. Give Yourself Permission To Feel Okay With Where Your Are NOW

You've probably got a lot on your plate in addition to growing your herbal business, so give yourself grace and accept your current circumstances for what they are. 

Your experiences now will form the building blocks for what is to come. 

2. Challenge Yourself To Believe Your Goals ARE Possible & Can Become Your Reality

We are never truly aware of what we can do if we set our mind and our bodies to work in a way that is aligned with our goals.

Rather than thinking of those dreams that you have inside yourself simply as dreams, give yourself that freedom to think of it as something that can actually happen.

Challenge yourself to take it on as a true goal rather than just a dream.

The R.A.D.A. Framework

This framework helps us to organize our ideas, goals and actions into a continuous feedback loop so that you can work on what is most important for you and change course as required. 

REFLECT

The first step is to reflect back on your previous actions to get a clear picture of where you are currently standing.

What has worked? What hasn't? What opportunities should you be making the most of? Often, our past experience is the best guide to show us where to go next. 

AIM

Next, it's time to decide on a direction to head. Most likely, you've got lots of ideas but don't know which ones to focus on.

So let's avoid overwhelm and filter through the options so that you can aim for your best chance for success! 

DESIGN 

Now it's time to create an actual plan of you want to do and how you're going to do it.

You're mapping out dates, who's responsible for each task, how it will be done, and what your team capacity is. It's getting into the practicalities of your project and how to actually make it happen.

ACT

Finally, it's time to put your plan into action and hold yourself accountable to it.

This is where you focus on the implementation and allow the plan to pan out naturally, with in-built dates to check in on your progress and change course if required. 

Action Step:

Download the R.A.D.A Framework worksheets and spend some time working through the questions to help you to gain clarity on your best path forward and start mapping out what you need to prioritize.

When you're done, please comment on our community post with your #1 goal for the next quarter and what will make it a success for you.

It is NOT easy to create an herbal business that is sustainable over the long term.

What's going to get you through those harder parts so that you can also reach the peaks is your mindset and the ability to keep going even when the going gets tough.

From Marlene Adelmann (Herbal Academy) 

Be realistic about your goals and start small. That gives you a wide field to advance into.

It's a journey and taking your time will help you to pick up on the nuances that will actually help you to succeed. 

Gear up for the idea that it's going to be tough and challenging. And when you meet those challenges, celebrate! Give yourself a Pat on the back. You'll need to feel those successes along the way to stay motivated.

Starting a business will define who you are.

Running a business is going to define and amplify and magnify every characteristic you own, the good ones and the bad ones. Stay humble and open to learning.

Just allow yourself the time to grow and be true to you. You don't have to be everything to everyone. You just have to be you. And that's always enough.

Feeling Worthy & "Imposter Syndrome"

Do you sometimes doubt your own expertise as an herbalist? 

This is something that we all experience occasionally, no matter what stage of your journey that you're at.

Here are some steps that might help:  

1. Realize that it's normal to feel like this from time to time.
2. Allow yourself to feel those feelings
3. Level up to the next phase of being okay with being uncomfortable.

The more you do this, the more it becomes a skill that you have mastered to go out of your comfort zone and actually try things, even when it doesn't always feel that comfortable. 

Action Step:

Download the Commitment Pledge, sign your commitment and keep it somewhere visible to help you to continue as you move through the highs and lows of building your herbal business. 

When it comes to growing an herbal business, finding time to dedicate to your craft as an herbalist and growing your business can be a  real struggle. The key is to learn to prioritize the right tasks and spend your time in an intelligent way on the tasks that really matter.

Let me ask you this: 

• Are you in charge of your day? 
• Do you really control what you do and decide how you spend your time? 
• .... OR are you responding to demands put on you by others? 

When it comes to actually getting things done, you need to consider WHAT to do, and HOW you spend your time.

The key is to pinpoint the important things that change the game (BEFORE you start doing!) so that you can cut out the rest and just focus on the game changers.

Eisenhower Priority Matrix

What is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important.”  — Dwight D. Eisenhower

If you don't pay attention, it's easy to let urgency side track us from our big goals and warp our perception of what’s important for our herbal business growth.

The routines and habits of “trivial” work SUCK the value from our days.

The Eisenhower Priority Matrix can help you decide which tasks are most important for you to work on now (what to scrap, and what to set aside for later!) and optimize the way we spend the time that we do have.

Helpful Online Tools 

For time tracking: 

• Toggl: https://toggl.com/
• Rescue Time: https://www.rescuetime.com/
• AirTable Spreadsheet: https://airtable.com/shrvR40g2EyfFBdKQ

For project management and scheduling: 

• Google Calendar
• Trello
• Asana
• Monday

ACTION STEPS: 

1. Track your time for ONE WEEK to get some data on how you currently spend time. 
2. Categorize your current tasks according to the Eisenhower Priority Matrix. 
3. Schedule out when important (and not urgent) tasks will be completed. 

The place where you work has a significant impact on the output of your work and the results that you have.

This is especially important for herbalists because even the emotions that we feel when working with the plants can work their way into the products and services that we offer.

Optimizing your space helps you to work most effectively and help your clients in the best way. (Plus, don’t we all love working in a beautiful environment surrounded by plants or in a gorgeous apothecary?!)

Becoming an herbalist is a lifelong journey and we can never stop learning because there is always more to discover about the world of plants.

It is helpful to round out your knowledge of herbs with self study in addition to courses and/or apprenticeships with other herbalists that you admire.

This will be unique to you and what is right for one herbalist will be different for another when it comes to education.  

Herbal School

Here are some good sources that may help you in decided where to follow your herbal education: 

• https://chestnutherbs.com/herbalism-schools-directory/
• https://www.americanherbalistsguild.com/school-profiles
• https://mountainroseherbs.com/herbal-education/

The people in your network can help you immensely on your journey as an herbalist if you are able to reach out when you need help.

Ideally, building connections with other herbalists locally and around the world as soon as you can will allow your journey to progress more quickly and smoothly.

A great place to start building connections is the Herbal Entrepreneur Community, which you have complete unlimited access to as an Herbal Circle member. 

There are so many things to think about and set into motion when you are ready to actually start your herbal business.

You’ll need to set up the legal entity for your business, start bank accounts, secure your business name and everything else that you may need. 

If you want to continue being an herbalist for the long term, you will need to adapt the way that you run  your business to the world that we live in (that is, you need to make a profit to stay in business!)

A great way to do this is by mapping out your revenue and pricing your products and services in a way that supports what you do. 

• EXTRA RESOURCE: Our Pricing Masterclass (included for Herbal Circle members) will guide you through the 7 key steps to pricing right. 

• EXTRA RESOURCE: KERRII allows you to determine more accurate pricing to eliminate manual paperwork, manage your inventory and keep track of formulas. 

It’s not necessarily the most exciting part of running a business but keeping track of your numbers and having good accounting practices is incredibly important to simplify your operations and reduce stress come tax time!

Now it’s time to figure out exactly who you want to work with and how you are going to help them with your herbal business.

This is key so that the rest of the roadmap, especially when we get into marketing what you do, falls into place effortlessly.

When you truly know your customers and what they want, running your business as an herbalist will be so much easier.

Customer Pathways allow people to get to know you, what you do as an herbalist and how they can benefit from your business.

Once you set these pathways into motion, they can continue to work on their own and continue to bring in new clients as long without much additional effort from you.

Now it's time to VALIDATE your idea and getting real with questions like

• Will this work?
• How will it work?

It's easy to get carried away with each idea that you come across but there certain steps that you can take BEFORE starting to implement anything to "check" your idea and make sure that you are spending energy where it makes sense to spend it. 

Market Trends

Google Trends is a free tool that allows you to see interest over time of different search terms on Google. Ideally you want to start your business on a topic where the general trend is going up over time. 

(This tool can also be helpful for planning out when to market certain products. E.g. Searches for "herbal tea" peak each year in winter, and interest is going up over time.) 

Building the brand for your herbal business involves creating a unique name and image in the consumers' mind that attracts and retains loyal customers.

4 Keys To Good Branding: 

1. Know Your Market. Who is your ideal customer? (It’s probably NOT you.)
2. Connect Your Vision. What values set your brand apart? (BEFORE deciding tangible elements!)
3. Stand Out From The Crowd. How will you brand be easily recognizable with a “twist”?. 
4. Be Consistent. Keep it the same across all platforms to build trust.

Now that you’ve got your herbal business set up it’s time to launch it and make sure that people know about it.

There are many different pieces that come together for a successful business launch and this phase is all about planning how each of them will come together to serve your purpose and have the greatest impact.

In today’s world, it is almost essential to have a website for your business, even if you plan to primarily work in an in-person setting.

Thankfully, it doesn’t have to be too difficult even if you consider yourself to be “non-techie” and we have step-by-step tutorials inside the Herbal Circle to help you get a simple website setup.

Another big priority to get your business out there and help people find out about what you do is becoming more active on social media.

At the very least, it is worthwhile to reserve the social media handles for your business name as soon as possible and then you can create a regular posting schedule to stay on your potential customer’s radar going forward.

One of the most effective marketing tools currently available to us is email marketing.

This is preferable because you have more control over who receives your emails and people are more engaged inside their email inbox than when they are surfing the web or scrolling social media. 

You can send regular newsletters or create automations to stay in contact with people as you need.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of optimizing your website so that Google and other search engines can “see” what your website is about and direct people there when they are searching for what you offer.

This is a very clever marketing strategy because once the work is done, it continues to work for you behind the scenes without much extra effort.

Each of the different marketing channels that we’ve mentioned so far (e.g. social media and blogging) help to bring more people to your website so that they can get to know more about you. From here, the next step that you want people to take is to become a customer or sign up for your email list so that you can nurture them and take them further along the customer journey.

Finally, it’s important to actually promote what you are selling and ask for the sale! Marketing and brand awareness come first but as potential customers become more familiar with your brand you need to invite them into work with you.

This can feel uncomfortable at first but is so important for the rest of your marketing plan to be successful.

Now that you have started running your business, you have started to create some data that allows you to reflect on your progress and redirect your future efforts.

Analyzing the statistics can be overwhelming but is incredibly useful to increase the impact of your work as an herbalist with the resources that you have available to you.

Additionally, when you’ve been in business a while, you’ll start to pick up on certain tasks that tend to be repeated on a regular basis.

This opens up possibilities to create systems to streamline the process and potentially delegate to other members of your team and free up your time for other tasks that you enjoy doing.

Beyond systems and processes, it is also possible to completely automate some tasks that are essential to running your business. With currently available technology, you can trigger tasks to be completed on your behalf with technology and automation tools (Zapier, Acuity/ScheduleOnce/Calendly, Kerrii, etc.)

As your business grows, new opportunities may start to emerge as you can partner with other businesses that complement your work as an herbalist. For example, you may be able to negotiate better terms with suppliers or arrange to refer clients with other wellness practitioners or partner with influencers. The options are endless when it comes to accomplishing more alongside others.

You may also be in a position to hire other people to work with you and further the vision for your herbal brand at this stage.

This allows you to stay in your area of genius and other people to step up and take the reins where their strengths lie. However, you will need to ensure that the communication lines stay open and everyone is able to achieve what they set out to do, together.

A simple business is often the best type of business! At this point, you may be able to streamline your offerings and really hone in on what you do best, which may mean ceasing certain product lines or services. This is often the best thing to increase profitability, reduce stress and ultimately provide the optimal experience for your target customers.

Finally, we need to check back in on the vision that you had for yourself, your clients and your business at the start of this process. Are you where you want to be? Has your vision changed? The beauty of running your own herbal business is that you can be in control of the work that you do, and design your life in a way that supports you as an herbalist.