The Brief: My brother wanted a gar­den to sup­port his and his family’s health, save money on organic food, and add deli­cious flavour to their meals.

The Process

What we did:  We made the gar­dens in pre-made cor­ru­gated iron raised beds because my brother’s yard is prone to minor flood­ing in heavy rain (which we’ve sure seen  a lot of lately). The beds keep the plants off the soggy ground and improve drainage, plus, they keep things look­ing neat and tidy because the edg­ing is so smooth.

Next we sat down and wrote a list of plants my brother and his fam­ily LOVES to eat. At the top of the list was corian­der, sweet basil and chili. His wife is a pas­sion­ate cook, so she wanted plenty of herbs ~ and my brother loves fresh chili! We also planted kale, let­tuce, toma­toes, sil­ver­beet, rocket, thyme, mint, pars­ley, chives and rosemary.

We used the no-dig method I teach in The Abun­dant Veg­gie Patch Sys­tem to fill the beds and cre­ate amaz­ing soil. It breaks down to cre­ate soil that’s ‘alive,’  full of mico-organisms who make your plants thrive. The new veg­gie patch and beds were made in an afternoon.

The kids loved water­ing in each layer. In fact, I remem­ber my shoes were drenched by the end

 

The Out­comes

How long before they were eat­ing their har­vest? My brother began pick­ing leaves from the sweet basil and leafy greens within two weeks of planting.

How often do they eat from their new veg­gie patch? Daily

How much time & energy do they need to main­tain it? My brother waters by hand every two or three days (when it’s not rain­ing ~ then, he gets to take time off!). He’s also fol­lowed my advice to the let­ter and given them liq­uid fer­tiliser every two weeks, which has really boosted along their amaz­ing growth.

What resources he already had and what he needed to buy: He bought the ready-to-assemble plots from Stratco for less than $50 each, and I brought over some hay, mush­room com­post, horse manure and rock min­er­als. He had home-made com­post after doing The Abun­dant Veg­gie Patch Sys­tem last year, and grass clip­pings to add to the no-dig garden.

We bought the seedlings of leafy greens, cherry toma­toes and herbs. We had some pots already and used those for a con­ve­nient herb gar­den right out­side the back door.

The cost: Approx­i­mately $187 – this included the raised gar­den beds, seedlings, horse manure, mush­room com­post, hay and liq­uid fertiliser.

 

What tips & tricks did we use? We thought care­fully about what my brother really wanted their gar­den to do for his fam­ily, then ‘reverse-engineered’ it to sup­port their spe­cific needs and taste. So, we knew we wanted it to sup­port their health, and that meant grow­ing lots of herbs and greens. We also wanted to make it easy to make nutrient-dense sal­ads, so we planted my sister-in-laws new favourite veg­etable, kale, for that very purpose.

We made sure we added micro-organisims and extra organic fer­tilis­ers to the soil, to ensure the plants are well fed and healthy, so they’re nat­u­rally pest-resistant.

Eight weeks later… The gar­dens are thriv­ing! I was so excited to see how much everything’s grown and so impressed with my brother’s keen atten­tion. It pro­vides an ever-changing view from their kitchen table. They’ve been har­vest­ing like there’s no tomor­row, and are in the process of adding two more beds to dou­ble their grow­ing area.

What is their favourite thing? My brother says, “Hav­ing fresh herbs and veg­eta­bles tastes amaz­ing. And my wife is an awe­some cook, so she loves using them ~ and I love eat­ing them! Plus, the kids are eat­ing more veg­gies now too, which is great.”

How could a veg­gie patch support you?

Leave a com­ment below shar­ing what you have grown or would love to grow in your veg­gie patch, Sprouter!

Plus, make sure you’ve watched my new video ‘5 Secrets to an Abun­dant, Organic Veg­gie Patch’ and down­loaded the free guide (avail­able for a lim­ited time) for more tips and tricks to help you cre­ate your own abun­dant veg­gie patch.

Heads up! My course ‘The Abun­dant Veg­gie Patch Sys­tem’ will very soon be OPEN for enroll­ment. Don’t miss out on this awe­some online course. You’ll be reap­ing (& har­vest­ing!) the rewards for years to come

With love,

 

I’ve had some lovely Sprouters email­ing ask­ing for more detail about Bschool, how I run my online busi­ness, and I’ve fit it all in around my health. It seems a few of you also know what it’s like to be unwell, or flat-out, or cop­ing with finite energy reserves (aren’t we all to some degree?).

Here are my hon­est to good­ness answers about Bschool, cre­at­ing this online busi­ness, how much expe­ri­ence you need before you begin, how I’ve tried to achieve ‘bal­ance’, and how you can fol­low your intu­ition to lead you to your heart’s desires.

May it serve you well. xx

PS. If you’ve missed the awe­some FREE video train­ing series Marie For­leo has made here are the links. You don’t want to miss these!

1. Video #1: The 6 Pil­lars Map to a prof­itable online business
2. Video #2: Marie’s ‘Dirty Lit­tle Secret’
3. Ready to enroll in Bschool? Click here to enroll (Enroll­ment closes March 4th. Remem­ber to email your receipt to: info (at) nicolachatham.com to score my FREE bonuses val­ued at over $600…. details below).

PPS. I’m thrilled quite a few Sprouters are becom­ing Bschool­ers and find­ing the courage and direc­tion to cre­ate a life and busi­ness they love. If you want to, I encour­age you to join us. xx

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How much did B-school demand in terms of energy? 

When I went through Bschool two years ago, I was still pretty sick and in fact, I found the course gave me energy because it gave me so much hope and inspi­ra­tion. I couldn’t wait for each new mod­ule to come out and would jump onto my com­puter every Tues­day morn­ing in antic­i­pa­tion of the next mod­ule being released. The course itself includes about 1.5 – 2 hrs of video con­tent each week for six weeks, with two weeks off in the mid­dle to allow for imple­men­ta­tion of what you’re learning.

The imple­men­ta­tion of the actual web­site and cre­at­ing my busi­ness has taken an enor­mous amount of energy, how­ever. I tell you the truth. But, I want to put that into context.

I’m a ‘3’ on the Ennea­gram Typ­ing sys­tem, with a four-wing and a self-preservation instinct. Which basi­cally means I derive enor­mous sat­is­fac­tion from my work and am dri­ven by a desire to feel secure by build­ing up a base of mate­r­ial well-being. Basi­cally, I really, really want to keep my house and gar­den as a sanc­tu­ary for cre­ativ­ity, heal­ing, intro­spec­tion and… well, my work.

Because I freak­ing love to work. When it’s on my own busi­ness, it doesn’t feel like work. It’s just so fulfilling.

I’ve done a lot of the tech­ni­cal side of set­ting up my web­site and all my prod­ucts and courses myself. Because I like to fig­ure stuff out. But now, I’m begin­ning to hire more and more help, which is so lib­er­at­ing and excit­ing. I share more about that below.

If your per­sonal cir­cum­stances were dif­fer­ent from mine (ie. If you had more resources to out­source con­trac­tors and peo­ple to help you), you wouldn’t need to put as much energy into build­ing your web­site and busi­ness as I have. I’ve seen other Bschool­ers who are sin­gle par­ents, work­ing full-time jobs, or unwell like I was, find ways to imple­ment what they learn in Bschool to cre­ate busi­nesses that fit in around their sched­ules and energy levels.

Plus, the beauty is now, there is such a thriv­ing com­mu­nity of Bschool­ers here in Aus­tralia and around the world, there are a lot more peo­ple who can help you, or you can work with to fig­ure out the tech­ni­cal side of things. When I first started, I lit­er­ally felt like I was pretty much the only Aussie doing it… until a few weeks into the course when a few of us con­nected. You’ll learn more about that below too.

It’s totally up to you. Busi­nesses and brands that grow grad­u­ally can have a very secure, solid base and will bring you con­fi­dence, integrity and sta­bil­ity as your busi­ness grows. I’ve learnt a great deal about myself while build­ing this busi­ness, and find every­thing unfolds in per­fect timing.

How much expe­ri­ence did you have before doing Bschool? Did you have any for­mal qual­i­fi­ca­tions?

Per­haps you can relate to a lovely Sprouter who wrote to me say­ing, “I am anx­ious no one will take me seri­ously if I don’t have any qual­i­fi­ca­tions after my name.”

We all have to begin some­where. When I decided to move into teach­ing organic gar­den­ing, I had com­pleted my Per­ma­cul­ture Design Cer­tifi­cate, attended many open gar­dens around the coun­try, sat on the com­mit­tee of a com­mu­nity gar­den, and… best of all… trans­formed my own gar­den into an abun­dant organic veg­etable garden.

Since com­plet­ing Bschool I’ve also enrolled in other busi­ness courses and the experts say the same thing, “If you can help some­one get results and solve a prob­lem, they usu­ally don’t care if you have a degree or for­mal edu­ca­tion in your field.” This is obvi­ously not talk­ing about doc­tors and other pro­fes­sion­als. This is for ser­vice providers, coaches and yes, even organic gar­den­ing teach­ers. Think about it, do you mind if I haven’t got my hor­ti­cul­tural degree?

My past stu­dents who are now enjoy­ing grow­ing their own organic veg­eta­bles didn’t mind. They were drawn to me because I could help them solve a prob­lem, and they prob­a­bly liked my style. You’ll find the same thing! If you can help peo­ple get pos­i­tive results in their life, then you can find clients. I hope that takes away some of your anx­i­ety! I know if I sat wor­ry­ing about study­ing all the gar­den­ing courses in the world before I began teach­ing, I wouldn’t have helped the peo­ple I’ve helped, and seen the awe­some results in their lives and gardens.

I’ll post some case stud­ies of past stu­dents in the com­ing days, so stay tuned for that!

What did you put in place to ensure you achieved bal­ance?

I wouldn’t say I ‘achieve bal­ance’ per say. How­ever I am happy most of the time and find life very excit­ing and ful­fill­ing these days. Here’s a list of things that have helped me stay sane and happy:

1. Fill­ing up my own well first

I read a lot of soul-nourishing books. SARK is my cur­rent favourite; she is so gen­tle and open about her foibles. ‘Glad No Mat­ter What’ is my cur­rent favourite of hers and have found it’s pro­foundly spir­i­tual like Eckart Tolle’s work, but with more of an ‘every-day’ application.

Nature, gar­den­ing, spend­ing time alone and time with friends, walk­ing my dog and read­ing are my favourite sources of fill­ing my own well of inspi­ra­tion. Oh, and lis­ten­ing to The Hamish and Andy Show pod­cast on my walks through the hills.

2. Elas­tic Scheduling

Today I dis­cov­ered a term to describe per­fectly how I have man­aged my time and energy over the past few years. To quote SARK, “I usu­ally cre­ate what I call an “elas­tic sched­ule” that can bend and stretch to allow for ener­getic shifts.” Some­times I don’t have energy to com­plete a project one day, so instead I rest and usu­ally find I’m re-energised the next day. When I’ve made my courses, I’ve known I could film the videos each week in accor­dance with my energy, as long as I had them all fin­ished dur­ing the week, it would be fine. It suited me much bet­ter than com­mit­ting to a par­tic­u­lar time for a live work­shop, for exam­ple, because I didn’t know day-to-day if I’d be well enough to work.

In the past I could only really focus on one project at a time and I made sure I allowed plenty of space to move on it. Here’s a pic­ture of my cur­rent yearly plan­ning cal­en­dar (after my friend’s kids gen­er­ously drew my por­trait on it). You’ll notice I keep only one or two things as the main focus for each month. It just works bet­ter for me that way, and allows room to shift those things around as new oppor­tu­ni­ties inevitably pop up.

3. Daily Walks & Semi-Regular Yoga

I take my dog on almost daily walks through the rolling hills. She’s my soul’s delight; we’ve been together for 15 years. I love how she fits in with my energy lev­els and desire for companionship.

Also, my lit­tle town is awe­some. I love its low-key vibe and unpre­ten­tious qual­ity. Each week a few women and I meet up in a gor­geous wood-lined room for a yoga ses­sion, fol­low­ing along with a DVD from the library. We enjoy each oth­ers com­pany and feel relaxed and more flex­i­ble after our hour long ses­sion. I love that I don’t have to com­mit to a rig­or­ous pro­gram or feel like I’m ‘falling behind’.

4. High-Quality, Nutrient-Dense Food

I make sure I eat nour­ish­ing foods, from the gar­den, of course! And I invest in qual­ity organic meats. I’ve found my body responds very well to eat­ing meat, even though I was vegan for a while and a part of me would pre­fer to thrive on a plant-based diet for eth­i­cal rea­sons. How­ever, I am hon­our­ing my body these days with qual­ity pro­duce and have expe­ri­enced the ben­e­fits over the past 12 months. I don’t eat much rub­bish, I sim­ply don’t keep it in the house. Instead I have things such as tahini on car­rots as snacks, rice, quinoa, eggs, some cheese, fresh fruit and veg­gies and some qual­ity gluten-free bread.

5. De-cluttering My Home & Relationships

The more stuff I’ve given away away and donated or thrown out that was either bro­ken, unused or unloved in my envi­ron­ment, the more energy I’ve felt. Over the past 12 months I’ve become a very big fan of de-cluttering and keep­ing my life sim­ple by only hav­ing things I love, use and appre­ci­ate. Even to the point of only keep­ing enough plates for 6 peo­ple. I rarely enter­tain and realised I didn’t need to be lug­ging around 20 din­ner plates in antic­i­pa­tion of a grand event.

I tend to guard my energy very closely in rela­tion­ships these days too. I’ve never had a lot of peo­ple in my life who pull me down, but these days there are hardly any. If I’m in a sit­u­a­tion where I feel stressed by someone’s energy, I’m learn­ing to stay present with them and pay atten­tion, and also put strong bound­aries in place to pro­tect my own energy. I’m learn­ing to check in with my ‘inner self’ before com­mit­ting to other people’s wishes and requests, and try to con­nect with what brings me joy, light­ness and enthu­si­asm instead of doing things because of oblig­a­tion or with a sense of striving.

It’s all an ongo­ing dance of learn­ing & trust­ing my intuition.

This is cur­rently on my desk­top, to keep remind­ing me to focus on fol­low­ing what will have the most impact and feels great:

6. Being Gen­tle with Myself & Lis­ten­ing More to My Body

For more about this, check out Part 1, Part 2 & Part 3 in the series I wrote “The 4 Sur­pris­ing Secrets to Heal­ing I Learnt from Karate World Cham­pion, Hay­ley Carr.” They’re some of my most pop­u­lar posts to date.

7. Con­nect­ing With Other Bschoolers

I’ll share in detail about this below. But for the short ver­sion, con­nect­ing with your tribe and find­ing peo­ple along your jour­ney to give and receive sup­port with, is worth the invest­ment in Bschool alone.

8. I hired a cleaner.

Seri­ously, this was the biggest thing I felt proud of myself for last year, because it was a shift in per­cep­tion about my self-worth. You can read more about that jour­ney here.

How has Bschool impacted your life?

#1. The Friendships

It sounds kind of sad, but I didn’t have many friends to hang out with when I enrolled in Bschool! Truly. When I left the city and moved to the coun­try many of my old friends lived hours away. So dis­cov­er­ing a new online com­mu­nity helped me feel con­nected and ener­gised in a way I hadn’t felt in years.

I used to spend days with­out see­ing any­one. I had can­celled my Face­book account, because it just seemed like an absurd way to spend time, and instead watched a lot of ‘Friends’ on DVD. My adven­tures involved going to the library each week to find new books, use their inter­net (I didn’t even have inter­net at home!) and bor­row movies to pass the time while I rested.

Then after enrolling in Bschool, Susana Frioni set up a break-out Face­book Group specif­i­cally for Aussie Bschool­ers, which was awe­some (and you can be a part too, of if you’re an Aussie and join Bschool). I reac­ti­vated my account, and found Face­book can actu­ally serve me as a source of encour­age­ment and inspi­ra­tion, instead of com­par­i­son and sadness.

A few weeks into Bschool, or per­haps it was after it fin­ished, I was inspired to begin a weekly mas­ter­mind call with any of those Aussie Bschool­ers who wanted to jump on the group call and share. We would talk about our biggest achieve­ment and our biggest chal­lenge right then.

It’s funny, because Susana’s told me she didn’t really ‘get’ what I was about to begin with, but then as we all con­nected more, she loved my focus on health and get­ting back to nature. She’s not nat­u­rally a gar­dener, you see! (But she’s chang­ing now with her lit­tle bal­cony gar­den).

Pretty soon she sug­gested we get together in per­son; Jess Ain­scough, myself and her since we all lived, amaz­ingly, all on the Sun­shine Coast. Two years ago there weren’t nearly as many Bschool­ers as there are now. These days there are hun­dreds all around the coun­try. So that’s how our ‘Power Posse’ meet-ups began.

I love hang­ing out with the girls. It’s actu­ally the thing I’ve taken away the most value from with Bschool; mak­ing con­nec­tions with other ambi­tious women, who have a focus on serv­ing their clients with integrity and also keep­ing their per­sonal bound­aries and lives flour­ish­ing. I count myself extremely blessed to be friends with them.

Now that my health is improv­ing more and more (a result I largely attribute to the sup­port, com­mu­nity, and wis­dom from women I’ve con­nected with through Bschool ~ Hay­ley Carr, Leonie Daw­son, Denise Duffield-Thomas, Jess Ain­scough, Susana Frioni ~ com­bined with a diet full of awe­some organic food from the gar­den), I have found the energy to con­nect with even more Bschool­ers to col­lab­o­rate and grow together.

Yvette Luciano from Earth Events is now work­ing with me on speak­ing gigs, and cre­at­ing my own Sprout Live Work­shops. Tahlee Rouil­lon from Atti­tude Rev­o­lu­tion is my new awe­some vir­tual assis­tant, Kris Emery is edit­ing my new book, nutri­tion­ist and herbal­ist Tammy Guest and I are brain­storm­ing new courses and pro­grams to teach peo­ple and chil­dren about herbs for health. It’s all incred­i­bly excit­ing. And all these women are Bschoolers.

It’s like finally hav­ing access to an “Old Boys Club” where in the past the men in busi­ness would boost each other along their paths to suc­cess, sim­ply by asso­ci­a­tion, shar­ing wis­dom, pass­ing on con­tact details of who they’ve worked with and who they recommend.

But the best thing is, the Bschool com­mu­nity Marie has brought together is based on heart-felt, authen­tic ser­vice. It’s very fem­i­nine, and I like that.

#2. Finan­cial Independence

Mak­ing enough money to keep my home and gar­den has been awe­some. And it con­tin­ues to grow as my busi­ness grows, which allows me to reach out and help even more peo­ple grow organic food.

#3. Per­sonal Satisfaction

Grow­ing a busi­ness you love and that helps other peo­ple is pretty sim­i­lar to grow­ing an organic gar­den that sup­ports your health. It’s hugely reward­ing and per­son­ally sat­is­fy­ing. I can’t express that enough.

Do you have any other com­ments about this to offer? 

If You Have Doubts Like…. “Who Am I to Do This?”

Maybe you have a voice, like I did, that says things like “Who are you to teach/create/perform/speak/design courses?”. If you do, then sur­round your­self with peo­ple who will lift you up. My herb and gar­den­ing friend Dee Humphries was my cham­pion in the begin­ning, when I had doubts about begin­ning a busi­ness in an entirely new indus­try from the one I’d been work­ing in.

And my mum is my con­stant source of encour­age­ment, wis­dom and my biggest cheer-leader as I take steps towards build­ing a soul-satisfying, thriv­ing busi­ness. She also reminds me to be gen­tle with myself.

You Are Unique & Have Some­thing Valu­able to Con­tribute to the World

I love this quote and want to share it with you. I’ve found it to be true. Some­times we think we’ll let ‘other’ peo­ple do the work we feel we’d love to do, because we think they can do it bet­ter. For instance, to begin with I was deeply ashamed of hav­ing Chronic Fatigue and felt like my read­ers would lose respect for me. But, in fact it’s set me apart in some ways, because it’s helped me find ways to help peo­ple cre­ate low-maintenance gardens.

“You are a spe­cial, unique per­son and you have a mean­ing­ful con­tri­bu­tion to make to the world… You have a role to play that no one else on the planet could fill. The spe­cial con­tri­bu­tion you came to make is your life’s work. When you are doing that work, you are fol­low­ing your higher path, and your life will be filled with increas­ing joy, abun­dance, and well-being.” ~ Cre­at­ing Money, Sanaya Roman & Duane Packer

If you’re sit­ting on the fence about Bschool and whether it’s for you, right now, I’d try this exercise.

1. Sit still for a moment and close your eyes.
2. Imag­ine tak­ing that daunt­ing step, and actu­ally enrolling in Bschool.
3. Pic­ture intro­duc­ing your­self to the women in the Face­book groups, and feel what it might be like to have a whole stream of warm ‘Wel­come to the group!’, ‘Hello’, ‘Hi and wel­come, this is going to be awe­some’ com­ments from women around the world in reply.
4. Imag­ine what it would feel like to have the step-by-step sup­port to cre­ate a busi­ness you truly love, where your gifts and strengths really, deeply help other peo­ple who need what it is that comes nat­u­rally to you.
5. Imag­ine mak­ing your own money.
6. Doing what you love.
7. Sense if your heart feels like it is expand­ing with a sense of excite­ment and pos­si­bil­ity, or if it feels con­stricted as though this is a heavy bur­den to bare right now. But­ter­flies are not a bad sign. Heav­i­ness is.

Your answer lies in there. Your body & intu­ition knows and will tell you. I’ve found the more I lis­ten to my body and my heart (some­thing that doesn’t come nat­u­rally for an achievement-driven ‘3’), the more my life opens up and grows in a deeper sense of pur­pose & fulfillment.

Some­times it tells me to wait. And that’s ok.
Some­times it knows it’s time to leap. And the next step always appears.

You’ll know. Trust your gut and your intu­ition. Let it guide you.

Plus, remem­ber, Bschool has a full money-back guar­an­tee and a four monthly pay­ment plan, if that helps.

I leave you with a quote cur­rently on my mirror.

I’ve found it to be true:

 

Here’s to your heart’s desires.

With love,

 

 

PS. If you decide to enroll in Bschool and would like to receive all my gar­den­ing courses for free, check out the bonuses & fol­low the instruc­tions below. xx

___________________________________________________________

SIGN UP FOR B-SCHOOL AND I’LL GIVE YOU $600+ WORTH OF AWESOME ORGANIC GARDENING BONUSES!

If you decide to make this valu­able invest­ment in your­self, I want to reward you by giv­ing you gifts that are going to sup­port you in your life, busi­ness & garden.

 

Sign up for B-School USING THIS LINK and you will also get …

+ The Abun­dant Veg­gie Patch Sys­tem – my online gar­den­ing course (worth $295)

+ Grow Organic Food in Pots – my online gar­den­ing course (worth $179)

+ The Sprouter’s Organic Gar­den 2013 Plan­ner & Cal­en­dar e-books (worth $14.95)

+ And group Q&A call with me where you can ask me absolutely any­thing – about busi­ness, health, gar­den­ing etc. ($150 or…priceless!)

*IMPORTANT: To score all of this, you must sign up through this link, for­ward your receipt to info@nicolachatham and com­plete the whole B-School pro­gram.

__________________________________________________________________

If you have ques­tions, Marie has answers. She has cre­ated an amaz­ing PDF doc­u­ment that out­lines absolutely every­thing you will receive when you sign up for B-School. Click here to check it out.




WANT MORE PROOF BSCHOOL WORKS?

Check out this gor­geous website, show-casing amaz­ing real-life B-School suc­cess sto­ries. These women have made their dreams come true by imple­ment­ing Marie’s teach­ing. I just love the colours

*Remem­ber, to score the above bonuses you must use this link to pur­chase B-School and for­ward your receipt to info@nicolachatham.com .

PS. Bschool is hands down the best invest­ment in any course I’ve ever done. The com­mu­nity it brings together is the MOST sup­port­ive, ded­i­cated and inspir­ing I’ve ever encoun­tered. If you’re look­ing for a change for the bet­ter in your life and biz, don’t miss this opportunity to be a part of it.

Plus, I’d love to help you cre­ate a gar­den & biz you love too! xx