When to go Full Time with your Microgreens Business
So you might have been running your microgreens farm for a while, alongside your job. You love microgreens farming and the idea of just running your microgreens business, and not doing any other income generating work, fills you with excitement. But when is the right time to take the leap and go all in with your microgreens farm?
There isn’t a perfect answer to this and it will definitely involve you feeling a little apprehensive when, and if, you take the plunge (especially if you currently have a regular income from elsewhere), but there are some key indicators you can look for that will help make the leap less daunting and a little more informed.
We all have different circumstances, financial responsibilities, lifestyles and goals, so what will inform one person, will be different to the next, but these indicators will cover the majority of us, as no revenue figures are used.
I’ll start with my own story as a real life example.
I decided I wanted to set up my own little microgreens farm from home after reading about microgreens in a market gardening book in January 2017. I loved plants, I loved the idea of setting up my own small business and I was ready to make my next job move.
I started researching, bought some basic supplies and attempted my first grows.
The first microgreens I ever grew!! China Rose radish shoots, grown in an old tomato punnet, inside a lunch box as a drip tray! I was so stingy with the seed (I was costing everything to the penny!) I wouldn’t even grow in a full seed tray!
I sold my first punnets of microgreens to a couple of restaurant customers in May of that same year, all whilst I was still working at my job 4 days a week (earning around £400/week). I continued to do this for 8 months. Increasing the amount I was growing, increasing my sales each week and loving the whole process. It was clear to me during these first few months that I wanted to run my microgreens farm as my ‘job’ - my only income generating activity - so, in September 2017, I left my main job, went to the west coast of Canada for 2 weeks to do some wild camping, visit a microgreens farm and just generally have a good think and some downtime(!), then came home and went all in with my microgreens farm.
I felt a bit scared, but I was definitely more excited. Especially for my new, more leisurely lifestyle! I loved that I was building something for myself, and growing food, and my intuition (coupled with my experience and the business’ foundation I’d built during the previous 8 months) was telling me it would work.
Other advice on this could suggest you wait until you’re at least replicating your current job’s salary before you even think of making the move to quitting a steady income for your new microgreens venture. And you can, by all means, do that, especially if you, your lifestyle and your family rely on a certain level of income.
For me though, I decided to quit my job when I was selling a regular £150 / week of microgreens to my first 10 customers. This wasn’t then, and certainly isn’t now, enough to live on in the UK. But I still took the plunge. I loved my business, knew I wanted to do it for a long time, knew I’d only just scratched the surface of a customer base in Leeds (really important!) and I’d also spent that year making sure I’d put a little cash aside from my salary to support myself whilst I was growing my business (mostly so I could go all in sooner!).
Exactly 12 months later, I was selling £500 of microgreens a week, there was still loads of potential customer streams to tap into and I’ve never looked backed.
My story is just one example of someone, based in the UK, who took the leap of faith to go all in with their microgreens business.
Over the past 8 years, our amazing community of small scale microgreens farmers in the UK has skyrocketed, and the more of these people I work with and chat with, the more I’ve been able to pull together a list of reasons why and how they’ve been able to go all in with their microgreens businesses.
5 Key Indicators that going full time with your microgreens business is a great option (and you probably need most of these!):
You love the process of microgreens farming and are quite certain you’d love to do this as your full time income generating activity.
You know you’ll be able to get many new customers onboard, but you currently don’t have the time to onboard, supply and deliver to them. Time restraints due to other work are preventing your business from moving forward.
Your weekly earnings from your current sales are enough to live on for at least the first 6 months, or you’re able to top this up from savings.
You have a clear business strategy in place for at least the next 12 months that will result in the growth you want. This will include: who you’ll be selling to, how you’ll find those customers, what products you’ll offer them, at what price, how will you get your products to them etc.
You have the space at home to expand your growing to support your sales revenue goals.
There will never be ‘the best time’ to go all in with your microgreens business. You’ve just got to go for it and do it when it makes sense to you, especially if you have all the indicators above in place.
If you have the resources, the energy, the want and the sales base in place to move your business to the next level, then it’s time to go full-time. And when I’ve been referring to ‘full-time’ throughout this article, I don’t necessarily mean the traditional ‘full time hours’ of 35+ a week spent on your business, I mean having your microgreens farm as your only income generating activity you do. Regardless of hours spent on it.
And you don’t have to go all in a once. Could you start by reducing your hours at your job? Could you move some days to working from home to free up some extra time for your business? You’ll be surprised how many trays of microgreens you can water whilst the kettle boils!
And on the flipside of all this - if you’re currently not in employment, don’t have any source of income, then go all in right now with your microgreens business!
Whatever stage you’re at, if you know deep down that you want to be farming microgreens in your foreseeable future, know you have the local market to support it, then go for it! I promise you, it’s worth it.
If you’re at the start of your microgreens business, and you're interested in a detailed step-by-step plan to follow, then I'm currently in the process of re-making the UK Microgreens Business Course. The course takes you through the complete process of setting up and running your own microgreens farm in the UK.
You can join the Waitlist here and be the first to know when's it's available!
Hiya! I’m Amy Wright and I run my own microgreens farm in Leeds , UK.
I also teach people through the UK Microgreens Business Course how to set up and run their own home based microgreens business, specifically in the UK.