131 From Horse Poo to Harvest: Cultivating Long-Term Growth in Business

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Every day, I pull a wagon full of horse poop out to my future garden —a ritual that's not just about cultivating plants, but also about nurturing my entrepreneurial spirit. This episode is an invitation into that world where the principles of regenerative gardening intertwine with the art of growing a sustainable coaching business. From fertilizing with horse manure to the strategic choice of crops, I share how these actions parallel the careful nurturing required to ensure your business's roots are as healthy as those in your garden.

We will explore the realm of sustainable growth, contrasting it with the allure of artificial, rapid expansion that tempts many a coach. I lay out why a slow, regenerative approach, focusing on deep-rooted connections and trust within your community, is akin to the patient tending of a garden—both leading to a bounty that is not just successful, but also truly fulfilling over time. Join me as we explore these rich metaphors and take away practical wisdom for cultivating a coaching practice or any spiritual entrepreneurship venture with the same dedication and passion as a thriving garden.

If you are a visual leaner, I recommend watching this episode on Youtube so you can actually see the garden I am tending! You can find my Youtube channel HERE.

Kat HoSoo Lee is an Emotional Alchemy Coach, Spiritual Business Mentor and host of The Emotional Alchemy Podcast.

She loves playing in the space where science and spirituality converge because this is where we get to experience emotional alchemy. In her work, she educates space-holders about somatic physiology and environmental biology so they can deepen their practices of listening and presence which ultimately helps them expand their capacity to hold space for others.

As a Spiritual Business Mentor, she guides soulful entrepreneurs to approach their business as a spiritual practice. The work bridges the emotional landscape with practical tools which allow them to cultivate businesses that are rooted in conscious values, relational marketing and purposeful service.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, my friends, I have just taken my daily walk
out to my future garden.
I come out here every singleday and dump a wagon full of
horse poo and wanted to give youa little bit of a just peek
into like a minor part of thishomesteading project that we've

(00:22):
got going on here, and I thoughtof a really cool metaphor that
relates to spiritualentrepreneurship, so I wanted to
show that with you as well.
It's going to relate back tolooking at your business in
these like long-term phases andlike what phase is your business
in right now and can we sort ofaccept that that's the phase

(00:44):
that you're in right now,instead of trying to like over,
push and over speed up theprocess?
So I'm gonna show you thegarden and tell you a story
about the garden first.
Okay, so if you were to walk upto this little patch of my
property, you would look at thisand be like cat.
This just looks like giant,giant pile of poo and you would

(01:05):
be absolutely correct.
This is three piles of horsemanure and the first layer for
all these is a layer of likejust sticks and wood that we
found around the property andthat's kind of the basis and the
structure at the bottom.
Here you can sort of see itpoking out like there's a piece

(01:27):
there and there's like still arandomly wood or randomly green,
that piece of pine tree rightthere.
So we're doing a style ofgardening called Hugo culture
and the idea behind this is thatwe're piling up all this
organic matter and over timeit's going to compost and break
down and turn into really reallybeautiful, nutritious soil that

(01:50):
we can then plant lots ofdifferent things into and it's
gonna support a really beautifuland nutrient dense garden.
Here, and this is where you knowI'm looking at like five, six
years down the line, I wouldlove to be eating produce mostly
from my own garden here, butyou're looking at the first like

(02:12):
baby step towards that rightnow.
The first baby step towardsthat is every day I come out and
I dump a wagon full of horsepoo.
And the thing to understandabout gardening with horse
manure, which is what I'vechosen to do, you know we can
bring in a bunch of dirt, wecould artificially fertilize it,

(02:35):
but that's really not my speed.
I really love looking at whatwe already have on the property,
what can we utilize and yes, Iknow we've artificially brought
in horses on the property, butthey're working for us as well
here.
So the idea with horse manureand gardening with horse manure
is horse manure is quitealkaline.
So if you remember back tochemistry lab, that means that

(02:58):
on the pH scale of zero to 14it's going to be on the higher
end of that scale.
Lots of plants actually mostplants really enjoy being in the
neutral phase or just slightlyin the acidic zone.
So lots of plants tend to growin the like six to seven pH
scale and horse manures.
I don't actually know how highit is, but it's it's quite high.

(03:20):
So the plan this year knowingthat that is a very real and
important limitation and I wantto set myself up for success
this year is we are going tocover all these with a bit of
topsoil and we are going toplant very specific crops that
are going to do well in alkalinesoil and also help us actually

(03:46):
change the pH content and thenutrition content of the soil
that you see here.
So things like peas and thingslike beans and things like beets
actually do pretty well inalkaline soil and that is going
to be most of what I'm plantingthis year.
There's gonna be a lot of peas,a lot of beets and a lot of

(04:08):
beans.
So what that's going to do is alot of those are nitrogen
fixers, and so it's going tobring the pH balance of that
soil down so that next year I'mgonna be able to plant things
that I think are more fun, liketomatoes and strawberries and oh
man, I get really excited aboutlike broccoli and having kale

(04:32):
all the time.
So how does this relate back tobusiness?
A lot of times when I am talkingto newer coaches, folks who are
just starting their spiritualentrepreneurship business, or
folks who haven't had a chanceto really build up a community,

(04:53):
and I really think about thecommunity that I've built here
on this platform in mynewsletter within the BAM space,
as being the soil of mybusiness, and so lots of folks
come into this space being likehey, I wanna run group programs,
I really wanna be teachingretreats and I wanna be creating

(05:15):
online courses and creating allthis material that's gonna
bring in passive income, and Ilove that vision.
For you, it is a very similarvision that I had several years
ago, and I want you to also justtake a moment and take stock of
where your business is at themoment, because what you don't

(05:36):
wanna do is forget that perhapsyour soil hasn't been developed
yet, perhaps it's a little tooalkaline, like my soil is here,
and you're trying to plant atomato where a tomato is not
going to thrive, and so when Iam chatting with folks who are
early on, or rather in thatstage of their business, I mean

(05:58):
it doesn't really matter howlong you've been in business, as
you know, if you have thecommunity to support it, then
you've got the community tosupport it right.
And before you have like thatlike nutrient dense soil, that,
like you know and trust that youcan like put almost anything

(06:19):
into and it's gonna do well in,I always recommend that you
start out doing one-on-one work.
I think that there is so muchbeauty in doing one-on-one work.
It's something that I tried toactually move away from last
year and I missed it too much,and so now I'm back to doing a
lot more one-on-ones.
But you know, in terms of likebuilding up the soil levels, it

(06:45):
is the most energy efficient andsmart thing to do at the very
beginning of your business.
So what you get from one-on-onesis you start learning if that
thing, whatever that thing isfor you, if that thing is
actually something that you cantalk about for several hours a

(07:06):
week.
You know, I think that I didn'trealize that I could talk about
spiritual entrepreneurship likead nauseam, like you put me in
a room and you start asking mequestions.
It's gonna go back to spiritualentrepreneurship in one way or
another.
And I didn't really realizethat I started coaching
one-on-one with people.
So it's gonna help you reallyfigure out like, hey, is this a

(07:27):
thing that I'm not gonna getsick of?
The other thing it's gonna helpyou do is it is a much more
flexible system and so you canmake these changes that would be
really difficult to do in agroup scenario.
And so, having that nimblenesswhere you can, you know, maybe
shift your coaching style alittle bit, shift the curriculum
, you know you can sort of honein and track someone else's

(07:50):
nervous system a little bit moreskillfully in that space, and
so then you're gatheringinformation about what's working
and what's not working in aone-on-one setting.
And you know, I think that thebest time to actually transition
and shift from one-on-one workinto group work is if you start
noticing yourself, and this isexactly what I did with BAM, is

(08:10):
if you start noticing yourselfsaying the same thing over and
over again, like several times aweek.
You know I'd be like, oh man,like I've talked about niching
like five times this week.
How fantastic would it be if Icould just get all five of those
clients together in one roomand we could actually create a
lot more magic by being in thatspace together, by co-regulating
and co-creating what thecurriculum is going to be.

(08:32):
And that is where BAM came tobe.
And so it's this like organicgrowth that happens.
You know, I think that if we'regoing to like sort of just keep
honing in on this gardenmetaphor, I think it is totally
possible and I've seen tons ofonline coaches out there who

(08:56):
have done it this way it'stotally possible to bring in you
know soil from outside and thenartificially fertilize
everything, and you know youcould probably grow some
tomatoes out of here in thefirst year.
But for me, it's less about howmuch fruit can I get in the
shortest amount of time in theshortest window of time, and

(09:18):
it's more about is this going tobe a sustainable thing that
continues to grow?
I know that I have met peoplethrough my coaching practice and
through coaching BAM, like Iknow I've met folks that I'm
going to be in contact with forthe rest of my life and, to me,
like that is the sustainabilityand the relationship building
that I value.
And so you know, I really thinkthat, again, no right or wrong

(09:44):
way to do it, it's just thatthis is the way that I feel the
safest and the most regulatedand the most rooted and grounded
and actually, like if I can usethe word trust here I feel like
I can trust my business morebecause I know I've tended to it
in a really slow and methodicaland tried and true over long,

(10:07):
long periods of time.
I tried and true in thosemethodologies versus jumping on
the latest hashtag or jumping onsome sort of trend or trying to
create this artificial growthin a way that's not rooted in
connection.

(10:27):
So I'd love to hear yourthoughts.