The Business of Community Herbalism

➡ Nicole Telks, an experienced herbalist and founder of the Wildflower School of Botanical Medicine, shares her insights on how to make a living through herbalism. She emphasizes the importance of growing herbs from seed to understand their therapeutic benefits and encourages people to start their own herb businesses. However, she warns about the challenges of competing with big businesses in the herbal supplement market, which is expected to reach $107 billion by 2017. Nicole advises thinking outside the box and maintaining a love for what you do as key strategies for success in the herbalism field.
➡ Starting an herb shop can be a fun and rewarding venture, but it comes with challenges like high rent costs and strict regulations. To succeed, you might need to diversify your offerings beyond just herbs, perhaps by selling yoga supplies or essential oils. Growing your own herbs can be a great option if you love working outdoors, but it can be hard to make a profit due to factors like climate change. Selling small amounts of different herbs can work if you’re willing to educate your customers about their uses.
➡ If you’re interested in making and selling herbal remedies, be aware that larger companies are now dominating the market. Since 2010, laws require all herbal products to comply with good manufacturing practices, which can be challenging for small businesses. Selling online can attract attention from the FDA, so consider alternative methods like Community Supported Herbalism, where customers buy into your apothecary. However, this might not be as profitable and requires building a community. Another option is to become an herbal clinician, working directly with people and plants, but this requires extensive education and community awareness.
➡ The speaker, an experienced herbalist and business owner, emphasizes the importance of personal connection and integrity in running a small business. They believe that large companies can’t compete with the personal touch and trust that small businesses can offer. They also discuss the challenges of complying with Good Manufacturing Practices (GMPs) and the issue of large companies trademarking traditional herbal terms. The speaker encourages aspiring herbalists to thoroughly research before starting a business, as it involves more than just packaging and selling herbs.
➡ If you’re passionate about herbs and want to turn it into a business, it’s important to educate yourself about the plants and the industry. Large companies may try to limit small herbal businesses, and online information can be misleading. Therefore, spend time learning about the plants and the business, and consider how much you’re willing to invest. Always remember to do what brings you joy and benefits your garden, and use your business to connect people to nature.

Hello and welcome to the Home Medicine Summit. If you’ve ever thought about trying to make an income through herbalism, then this presentation is going to be for you. And our presenter is extremely knowledgeable in the many, many different ways to make a living as an herbalist. Nicole Telks is the founder of the Wildflower School of Botanical Medicine, which offers both on site and online education in holistic herbalism. Nicole also operates a community supported herbalism share system, CSH, they call it. And I have to say, I live in the same area as Nicole and I love getting my bucks every quarter.

Nicole is an herbal clinician. She’s also the author of Medicinal Plants of Texas. She’s also very much an activist, so she has been heavily involved in making sure that big companies don’t trademark common names you wouldn’t believe, like Firesider or four thieves Tomic. Big companies have tried to trademark those names. Nicole lives on an 8 acre botanical sanctuary in central Texas and she’s been actively gardening and using food and herbs as medicine since 2003. So Nicole Telks here is going to talk about some of the realities of making money as an herbalist and some of the different ways that you can do it.

Hello and welcome to the business of community herbalism with Nicole Telkish. That’s me. And I am here today to try to give you some tips for growing an herb business and your own community or even just your backyard. So let’s get started. And it usually starts with the fact that people fall in love with herbalism and herbs very easily. So usually what I see happen, the general way that the progression goes is that somebody decides they want to grow something and they usually want to grow some food or something that looks pretty. And then as they get more and more successful with that and they get very full in spirit from doing that and their bellies, then they end up with wondering what those plants are used for besides looking pretty and filling their bellies.

And so sometimes this ends up where culinary herbs people start to research their culinary herbs, which are to me, just as medicinal as anything else. They’re just known as culinary herbs. In the United States, most places would see them as just herbs. But now when you start to grow these things, people generally will find that they begin to have love affairs with them when they start to see how completely effective and therapeutic they can really be. So to me, herbalism and herbs are using herbs not just for taste, flavor, but for therapeutic means to either prevent illness or help to maintain optimum health.

So I generally tell folks, if you really want to see your relationship shift with plants is to try growing something from seed and make it something easy, like cilantro or even to me, calendula is pretty easy. And even if you’re just doing it in pots, if you can go through the life cycle of a plant from seed all the way to where you’re harvesting the plant material, either to add to your food or for therapeutic means, then you will forever have your relationship with plants change, because they’re absolutely magical and can do all sorts of wonderful things for us and with us.

So just try it. If you haven’t done it, try it. And you know, my goal is to pretty much grow an herbalist in every home. And that being said, no matter where you go and if you get into business, be careful to keep your love and your joy of what you do involved. Because, you know, a lot of people grow their herb businesses from this place. So I think it’s time to see business kind of be directed from the heart and not necessarily the head for a change. So I think herbs help us to do that.

So let’s. Let’s look at the history of the herbal apothecary. So the herbal apothecary was a person, sometimes it’s kind of referred to now as a thing, as somebody who would store, compound and sell medicaments. And in that case, before drugs hit the scene, that was mainly natural substances. So most of the time you would find that somebody in the community was store housing a bunch of different remedies for people, and people could go get supplies if they needed it. But more often than not, you would find that most homes would have their own little first aid kits that they made from their gardens.

And the reason you would have things that were compounded or in some sort of storage is that this is often places that you couldn’t grow things year round. So in the rainforests, in tropical environments, you know, you could use fresh plants for most things. But in temperate zones, you would have to find ways of preserving and putting these things into little tinctures or other preserved remedies that people could take at different times of the year. So oftentimes it would be herbally infused wines or vinegars or some sort of lard was used topically with the herbs involved.

So that’s kind of where we came from. And now we’re going to kind of look at where we’ve gone, because obviously there is not an herbal first aid kit in everybody’s home. But that doesn’t mean it that there couldn’t be and that it might not change and that we might not see that happen. But I do think that we are in a really interesting time in America and the United States. So business has really shifted the way that people look at health, since health is business in the United States. So I say that because this the rise of the herb industry.

So I think this is an important context before we get into some of your options as far as how to get into the herb business. I think we need to keep a perspective here. And herbalism, what used to be something in somebody’s home and that the local neighborhood or in the nearest town, you’d have a shopkeeper, an apothecary, who would then get you whatever you didn’t have at home. And then the docs could go there and get what they needed. That doesn’t exist now. Most of our pharmacies are full of things that are not necessarily healthy.

So there are some, you know, there are some drugs in it, and there are some herbs. But most of our pharmacies, where you would go get that sort of thing has been taken over by business. And so I leave you with these chart or these links so that you can kind of get a perspective of what I’m talking about. So in the 70s, when herbs started to get more popular, you had a bunch of herb companies start where people started saying, oh, this is exciting. People are really liking herbs. Let’s get them into shops. In the 80s, they started to enter grocery stores.

And then there was, in the early 90s, the dietary supplement health and education act was passed, and that put supplements in their own category. So here comes the rise of the herb industry. So these links I’ve given you are going to give you a perspective of who actually owns a lot of these natural foods and these companies that you might be buying from that maybe even inspired you to start your own business. So, for example, places like Toms of Maine are now owned by, I believe it’s Clorox. And we have other companies like Burt’s Bees. Oh, no, it’s Burt’s Bees that I think are owned by Clorox.

And then it’s Toms of Maine. That’s owned by Colgate Palmolive, I believe. So either way, one corporation or another, most of these smaller businesses, even businesses like East Earth Herbals up in the Pacific Northwest, was sold to places like Adams Extract. So many small herb lines in the 90s were sold off in the early 2000s to these large corporations. And so what I mean to say by that is that there’s A lot of money involved with herbal supplements now. So the global herbal supplement market is supposed to reach 107 billion by 2017. And there’s the link.

So you can see that. So why do I keep talking about this? Well, you can’t compete with big business as a small business person, the same way that big business works. So I’m going to go through each of your options as a small business, but I’m going to encourage you to think outside of the box, which is pretty much what herbalism and herbalists do most of the time when they’re dealing with, say, a health concern or how to grow something differently when you don’t live in the same bioregion that it’s meant to grow. So, you know, it’s important to keep all of this in perspective that we are no longer in the same economy we were 150 years ago.

We’re in a global economy. And big business is really trying to compete now with the home remedy maker and the home business person. And a lot of what you see on the shelves is, is even confusing enough to where you might think that it is made by a home medicine or a home remedy maker. Not medicine, but home remedy maker. So people, I noticed this, this is an example when I went to the grocery store to get some pickles and I was out of my own. And so I looked and it looked like somebody had a mason jar up there, there, and it said farmers market pickles on it.

And I picked it up and it was a fake handwritten label and it was Vlasik’s version of farmers market pickles. Because big business has picked up on that. People want handmade items. So it’s very tricky now to compete in this market. So I’m going to give you some ideas for you to think about in your own life with herbs and ways other people have done it and maybe just give you herbs to chew on instead of food for thought. Herbs for thought. So here is the herb shop. So this is generally what a lot of people dream about when they get into herbalism and perhaps growing their own herb business.

So this is my friend’s shop somewhere in Texas. And I think what is really exciting about it, as you can see, you can have a lot of different items and work directly with the public. So I think herb shops are great because it brings herbs directly to your community. So this means that the herb shop doesn’t have to be in necessarily in a public place. This could be at a private herb farm that you have an herb shop, a retail shop, I’d say the cons with an herb shop these days is that if it’s not at your residence, which means if it is at your residence, you’re going to have a lot less traffic than a public space, say, in the middle of downtown.

If you do have a public space in the middle of downtown, it’s generally very expensive to maintain. Rents are astronomical these days. So, you know, if you’re slinging $5 an ounce herbs to, you know, cover your rent, that can be really difficult to maintain. So there’s also new regulations, and I’m going to talk more about the new regulations towards the end of this presentation so you can kind of get a better idea of what those regulations actually are. But there are new regulations known as good manufacturing practices that herb shops are required to comply with. And you have to add proper standard operating procedures that people can see.

So I do know herb shops that have been halted and the FDA has come in and shut them down for a while until they could comply. So this is real, but it doesn’t happen that often. But it’s something that you need to keep in mind. So it’s a really fun place. I mean, this is generally what I see most. Most people who get into herbs say, oh, what if I just had a little shop? So if that’s something that you’re considering, I highly recommend that you take some business classes that help you to get familiar with retailing and what it takes to really retail well.

And I also see the most successful herb shops generally will blend in other things, things to their herb shop. So they’ll have, maybe they’ll focus on yoga supplies, or they’ll focus on essential oils, or they’ll focus on gemstones and something that art. So that way, you know, when people purchase things, they aren’t just purchasing bulk herbs that are very affordable and not going to pay the rent. So. So there may be something else that you blend in. Other shops have done things like had practitioner space in the shop, so classes can help bring people in there and help with the rent and things like that.

So that’s the big thing, is that it’s fun. An herb shop is fun. You can even concoct your own remedies for your herb shop. But I think that it’s important to really understand what you’re getting into if you open up to the public. So this is another really exciting place that a lot of you who are, you know, if you’re accessing this from the Grow Summit, then a lot of people here are growing their own food. And so they’re thinking, well, maybe I could grow my own herbs. And I think that’s a great thought. And, you know, maybe a lot of.

I get a lot of emails. I used to get a lot more and I’ve had a lot less recently. But I think that, you know, people want to know, what should I grow? What is going to bring me in the most cash crop? How do I get it to market? And there’s some good books out there on growing herbs for market. And there’s. I know there’s an upcoming conference in 2016 that I saw in the Olympic Peninsula for the Herb Growing and Marketing Network. So there are resources for people that want to grow and market their herbs.

But I will say here’s the pros. The pros are that people get to be outside and work directly with live plants. So if you’re a farmer or you have a large garden and you want to work directly with plants and be outside a lot, this is a great choice. This is something that will keep you on your toes and keep you out with doing what you love. You will not work with as many people necessarily, but you will have probably some of the most the ability to be able to maintain the highest quality that you want to maintain.

So I like that because I know for me, I find that having high quality plant material is very, very, very important. And I know what I’m looking for. So for me, I need to be able to get it myself and do it myself and either wildcraft it, which means that you’re going out and stewarding wildland and collecting maybe some wild weeds to help, you know, balance out the ecosystem, but you can use those wild weeds for medicinal plant making or remedy making. But I’d say the cons are that as much fun as it is to get out there and get those plants and make things out of them, or just harvest them or grow them, it’s hard to make money off of growing plants.

And I’ll tell you, one of the biggest reasons is it needs to be large scale for you to really be able to make a living off of it, or larger scale. And you’re at the whim of climate change and climate chaos. So a lot of the old rules about temperate zones or temper I like to call my zone, which is kind of an ish zone. We don’t really have seasons, we have season ish influences. But anywhere where there’s a shift in seasons, you know, we’ve been undergoing massive imbalances in our weather patterns. And so it’s hard to say what to expect.

And that was even before climate change. I would say you never know what it’s going to, what’s going to happen when you’re a farmer. But I would say it’s even compounded more now. So that’s something that you have to keep in mind. But again, as an herbalist, I often work in gray areas, so I kind of bend the rules with gardening all the time. But when you’re gardening large scale to make money, you kind of have to be a little more consistent, I would say, than I am. And I don’t do it for large scale. I do it from my own small community and clinic.

So if you’re doing it large scale to make a living off of, then I would say that you have to be, you’re going to be putting in a lot of, I would say, time and energy and money into getting what you need to do it properly. And you’re going to need to research what crops are going to do well and what kind of crops are going to bring you the most bang for your buck. And then that kind of sometimes can take the joy out of gardening if you’re into doing it for beauty and diversity. Because if you’re looking at cash crop sales, that can get less exciting because you’re just doing crop after crop after crop.

The other thing you can do is sell the herbs. But here’s what I’m going to say. If you’re selling small amounts of herbs to people of different kinds, is that requires educating them on what you’re selling. So if you’re willing to spend that kind of time, then I think this is an excellent way that you can educate your community and what herb is good for what and get it to them. But I think how you would survive and be successful is to be really creative and orchestrate ways that people can learn about herbs so that they, when they buy them from you, they know exactly how to use them because that’s, they’re going to be repeat customers if they understand the herbs better.

But if you’re growing obscure things that they’re not sure about, that’s going to be a little harder for people to understand. So then we have the herb product line. So these are, this is a really fun thing for people who like to create and cook things. So this is, this is where you get to spend a lot of time in your kitchen and make up remedies and formulas or maybe recreate old remedies and then distribute them to your community and your family. So this is great if you’re into making things, and it can be quite profitable with enough clientele so you could make a nice hobby business off of creating little remedies.

And everybody loves little tiny bottles of things that smell good and taste good and look good. So here’s the thing, is that big business has found out that this is profitable, and now they are mimicking a lot of the smaller lines. And it’s really hard to tell these days who owns what herbs that are on the shelf. And another thing that has reared into, I would say reared its ugly head, but I don’t want to say it like that. But another thing that’s kind of come up now is that larger herb companies didn’t want the competition from smaller herb companies.

So in 2010, good manufacturing practices were passed into law. And this also affects the herb store that I was talking about. And there are a lot of the. I think it was 2012 when you had to get compliant by. And I think a lot of people making small herbal medicine lines and herbal remedies have no idea that they have to be compliant, but they do. And then what happens is that by the time you find out that you’re supposed to be compliant, you haven’t put in place the things from the beginning that would have kept you compliant, so you have to go back.

So by the time you’re making money, you actually have to go back and retrofit your product line to be compliant with good manufacturing practices and standard operating procedures. And all of that sort of stuff have to be in place. So it’s kind of a big deal. And the reason it’s a big deal is that also, you know, and I was saying how we used to be was, you know, little apothecary’s and herbal remedy kits in homes, right? Well, that’s how we used to be. Now we have the Internet, and it’s really easy for the FDA and others to find out who’s selling what through sites like Etsy and other sites.

So if you’re thinking of selling herbal products to the public, then I highly recommend you get well versed in good manufacturing practices. Or if you really don’t want to deal with that and you just want to sell which a lot of people have found that it’s what it takes to be compliant is getting harder and harder. And some of the larger herb companies are getting messed with by the fda. So if that’s something that you don’t want to deal with, then don’t get on the Internet. And it’s a lot harder for the FDA to shut down things if they can’t find you.

So I think personally that you can be quite successful without being on the Internet or at least making it a little bit harder for people to find you. Think you could be successful? Successful in what way? You may not be very rich off of what you do, but you will still be happy and not have to get into manufacturing woes. Because part of building an herbal medicine line and you can look at this picture, is that everything looks the same. So you have to get it branded or do the branding yourself. And then you have to get all the packaging and then you have to make sure you’re making all your preparations consistently and that everybody can get to your preparations.

So if you’re not on the Internet, how are they going to get your stuff? So even if you make the best lemon balm tincture in the world, how are they going to find you? How are they going to get it? You have to be at the market every week, or you have to be at your son’s soccer match every week with your stuff, or you have to be have a dinner party every month with your stuff. I don’t know how you’re gonna do it, but there has to be something where people can get an order and reorder easily.

So that brings us to another idea. It’s a little more innovative. And this is Community Supported Herbalism. And I put our link there. This is the link for the Wildflower School of Botanical Medicine’s Community Supported Herbal Shares. So some of you may have heard of the csa, which is Community Supported agriculture. And in this way people will purchase, you know, a share in a farm and then they get their farm share every week, or they get it every month, or they get it every whatever amount of time. In Community Supported Herbalism, the individual would purchase into an herbal apothecary or an herb farm or some sort of herbalist.

You know their preparations and you would purchase either monthly or seasonally or some amount of time. And so you can sometimes buy annual memberships or just purchase them by the season or month. And Community Supported Herbalism and these shares in the Apothecary will help to fund herbalism. And what I like is if you look at our apothecary website, there people can join and then once they join, they get membership into what we have. So even though people can see I have herbs, unless you’re a member, you can’t see what I’m selling. So just, it’s just something to think about.

It might be a way to be a Little bit more private. But here’s the pros. It’s a private club. It builds herbal community. Because the other thing is you can use your CSH to educate with. You can have maybe a little bit more information than you would if you were on a store shelf. Because at the store, if your stuff’s on a store shelf, somebody’s. You’re competing with a whole bunch of different herbal items. And it’s hard to get information out there, the store shelf, right. Or at a vending booth or wherever. So it’s a little bit more.

It’s a little bit faster of a transaction when you have your own line. But community supported herbal shares to me can mix more education with community building. And I’d say the cons are you probably not going to be as profitable as an herb line, especially if you don’t have a large community. But you can build community and you can get these shares out there. It’s just going to take meeting people and talking to them. Good old fashioned talking to people off of social media. Because I will tell you, you can do this on social media, you can do this online, but be careful how you do it if you’re not being compliant with good manufacturing practices.

So, and I’ve been talking a lot about that and I’m going to explain soon a little bit more about that. So this is an interesting, you know, option for people. And I encourage you to go check ours out and get ideas. There’s many herbalists that are starting to do these cshs. Ours, because we’re a school, incorporates in health as well so people can get other services and education. So then another option that you may think about is being an herbalist. And if you’re an herbalist, that means I should say, let me redefine that. Being an herbal practitioner.

An herbal clinician. So you would work directly with plants and then you would work directly with people, matching the plants to the people. And then you would just help people decide what they need. Now this is a little bit different than an herb store. In an herb store, somebody’s coming in to purchase something. Generally they already know what they want, that sort of thing. I am an herbal clinician and generally how I practice is that I look at the whole person from a traditional holistic western view and I decide a formula that I think is going to work for them best and bring them to balance.

Okay? So what this means is it’s a really great place to work because you get to know people really well and you get to know plants very well. But you do need a lot of education, and you have to educate your community in what you do. Because a lot of times, after I got the extensive education I did in herbalife, clinicianship and working with holistic paradigms and models, I found that people just had no idea what I did and how I did it. And so I spent a lot of time educating. And that grew into a school.

So I ended up with a school that helped people. To understand. What it meant to get seen by an herbalist. Because where I lived, it was not well understood. So people would sniff my tinctures. And think that my herbs were for cooking and things like that. So I had to do a lot of education. So it depends on what kind of person you are. But being an herbalist means that you could start to, you know, work professionally. After you get enough training, and then you could help people and get remedies for them. That match them to the best of your abilities.

And work with primary care practitioners to do so. And as I said earlier, Herbalists are ones who work in gray areas. So we oftentimes are doing things. That the medical world doesn’t really have time for, Nor does it want to do. So we have a really great niche as practitioners. And that’s why my goal in my life Is to bring an herbalist into every home. Through our education at our school. That, you know, we need more herbalists. This is not something that is a specialized profession. This is something that it is a specialized profession, Depending on how intricate health cases get.

But as far as home remedies, it’s easy to learn enough to be an herbalist in your home. With just, you know, a lot less training. Than, say, to take on complex health issues. So this is another place that you can go with your love for herbs into a business. So let’s look at competition. So I was saying at the beginning that, you know, it’s really hard to compete. In the world of business as a small business. I have been a small business now since 2001, I’d say. And I wanted to do it all. And I had no business training at all.

I just didn’t want to have a boss, basically. And I wanted to be outside as much as possible. And I loved herbs. That’s all that I knew. And I was stubborn. So I basically have made Just about every mistake that one could possibly make. And somehow I survived all the way through it. And now I can say, what is it, 15 years later, that I feel like I’m a pretty competent business person and herbalist, and that I am pretty successful at what I do. And I chose a bumpy road. I chose a road where I learned it all myself.

And I had a lot of twists and turns. So that’s the kind of personality I have. But what I wanted to say in this section was large companies cannot compete with you as a person. Because most of my clients and most of my students are not coming to me just because I’m an herbalist. They’re coming to me because they’ve heard of me, or they read about me and they wanted to meet me, or they liked how I sounded, or they had some connection to me when they saw me speak about a plant, or they just got along with me as a person.

So I think. I think this is where large companies can’t compete. They may be all over the Internet, they may be all over the street signs, and they may be in front of you all the time. Advertising and marketing. But to me, the best marketing, if you really want to be successful in your business, is to be someone who’s full of integrity and that you care about what you do. And you’re acting from a place of love and full of spirit and hope. Because you know, there’s a lot to be worried about in this world now.

And I think that herbalists are people that can bring hope to sometimes a distressing world. Because we can connect people back to the earth through herbal medicine. And that’s what I try to do all the time. And my business is built on that. So the best marketing you can do is not paying for advertisement or getting on Yelp even. It’s about. It’s about word of mouth and just building a community that knows you and not just on social media. It’s really important to me in this world to have face to face interactions with people. And it’s a lot easier to know whether or not you trust somebody when you meet them face to face and when it’s your health.

And herbalism generally attracts people who are trying to get back to health or maintain health. When it’s your health, you want to trust the person that you’re working with. So I found that it doesn’t matter what your labels look like. It doesn’t matter if you say something that’s not 100% accurate. It matters if you’re humble and you’re willing to say when you’re wrong and that you’re acting from a place of integrity and hope. So I think that while there’s these large companies that are going to be profiting $107 billion on these health supplements. If you’re listening to this, you are not that person right now.

And you may become one of the people that becomes in the health industry, in the herb industry. But most likely if you’re listening to this, you’re somebody who’s just interested in furthering their passion with plants. And so I think that that’s one thing that’s really missing from our world right now, and especially in the United States, is that if you call up a company, a large company, they kind of treat you a lot of times in a very inhumane way. And so bringing humanity back into your business and treating people like they’re people and treating plants like they’re worth something is how you’re going to out compete a large company and be really successful.

So I don’t believe that you have to get into this and look at business the same way that a business person would. I think that you can let the plants guide you and you can be very successful with that guidance. So let’s look at the road ahead. So what is going on? And I mentioned a couple of things that I want you to kind of think about as far as where to go from here. And I mentioned GMPs. GMPs are good manufacturing practices. If you Google that or you get online and do some research another way, or call up the American Herbal Products association, you can get all sorts of information on GMPs.

And GMPs, as I said earlier, are guidelines that have gone into place for people that manufacture herbal preparations. So this includes that you must have a commercial kitchen in which that you make your herbal remedies and that you have a standard operating practices book that outlines everything that you do and how you do it and what you make, and certificates of authenticity of each of the plants. And there’s ways to get around that a little bit. If you have some plant presses. I think some herb shops have been able to use plant presses from the plants they’ve harvested.

And so there’s many, many concerns with getting into business with the idea of GMPs. And I brought this up earlier, that there are a company, a couple of companies, and you can do this research yourself. At this time in 2016, a company known as Avena Botanicals and another large company, large to me company known as Urban Moonshine, have been targeted by the FDA for non compliance with GMPs. And these are companies that are much larger than your average herbalist in their backyard or home. These are companies with their own facilities, facilities that are very well established in their communities, that have accounts all over the country.

And the FDA has targeted them and they’ve had to raise immense amounts of money to be able to stay open. So it started happening last year. And the question in our minds as an herbal community is where is this heading? Where is this heading that, you know, because somebody didn’t log that a towel, that somebody had toweled down a surface at a certain time means that they have non compliance and they might shut down the business. I mean, herbalism is not something that is going to be generally as unsafe as, say, something like pharmaceuticals, yet it’s being treated as if it’s very unsafe.

And that we have to really worry. So it’s, you know, it’s something that’s in, you know, a hot topic right now, like what do we do about GMPs and the FDA? And so my, as I said earlier, I would really consider what you’re going to make if you decide to make herbs. Because when I googled how to have a success, successful herb business, I saw several articles come up on, oh, you can just, you know, grow some herbs and put them into packages after you dry them and sell them, and you can have a successful hobby business.

And that is absolutely untrue. There’s a lot more to selling herbs than, you know, knowing how to grow them and putting them into packages. So do your homework before you start an herbal business and make sure you understand what you’re getting into. Because there is a big difference between loving your hobby of herbalism and starting to make a living off of it. Another thing that’s come up is the trademarking of traditional terms. And what that means is that there’s a couple of traditional remedies that large companies are now trademarking so that nobody else can make them and sell them on the shelf or they’re attempting to do this.

So I’m in the middle of a legal battle currently with something known as Firesider that a company has attempted to trademark. So we are going through a very scandalous, in my opinion, case in which the company decided to sue us to try to maybe silence us, I don’t know. But they sued several herbalists who have spoken out against trademarking traditional herbal terms. Meanwhile, just recently, another term, it turns out, has been, it turns out, has been trademarked something known as Four Thieves Vinegar, which has been around since the 1500s, has now been trademarked by another company.

So this is the beginning. To me, this is the tip of the iceberg. Large companies see money and they want to keep their claws in the money. So they are attempting to stifle small herbal medicine makers. So be aware of this. And if you need more information, there’s website we started called free firesider.com that’s free firesider.com and it educates you on what’s going on with that. Another thing that you’ll see is that when you make herbal products or if you grow herbs or if you have an herb shop, Google gets in the way. So most people that you work with and you try to get an herb to will Google it and then ask a bunch of questions based on what their search came up with.

So Google is not necessarily an herbalist’s friend, nor any kind of medical practitioner or gardener or anything, because there’s just a bunch of information. Information is not knowledge, as Karen Sanders So a lot of people are acting on information, but not a true knowledge of what herbs do. And so I would say just keep that in mind when you’re working with people and plants and running a business. And so then the other thing to keep in mind is that you need education if you’re going to be turning your hobby or your love for plants into a business.

You know, I said do your homework with regulations and legalities, but also do your homework as far as what it’s going to take to properly educate people in what you’re selling. So you want to be very. I think part of it is that because we’re in this gray area, it’s really important that people properly understand safety with herbs and how to use them in the most effective ways. So that takes you being educated and so just really seek knowledge. Just seek knowledge. Don’t Google it. Like I said, actually seek some knowledge. And that takes spending time with plants, sitting with plants and getting to know the plants, and then doing all of the other research you would normally do.

So it’s just something to keep in mind. And then finally, if you’re starting to think about a business, it’s my opinion that you really need to think about how much money you’re willing to invest. Because if you’re moving from loving herbs and wanting to do something with them and growing them into something, then to do it properly and not stumble around for many years, as I did, the more you invest initially into getting yourself ready, the less you’re going to be backtracking later. So it doesn’t mean to over invest. You don’t need to buy everything you could possibly ever need.

But again, it’s about doing your homework and educating yourself on what it’s going to take and forming a business plan. And you know, I didn’t do my business plan until, I’d say, six years or so after I started running a business. And it wasn’t until I did my business plan that I felt that I started to understand it. And I am just starting to get a handle 15 years into it on really, truly steering my business and not feeling swallowed by it. So if you’re going to really want to do something, make a side income off of it, then I really suggest you think about how much you need to get educated and invest monetarily to get started, and how much you’re willing to.

Maybe you find out that you have to put in 20 grand and you’re not willing to do that. So maybe that’ll help. Help you decide what you want to do in herbalism, because there’s so many different ways to. To have fun with it. So finally, do what feeds you and your garden. So at the very beginning I said, you know, you come to this from a place of joy. Usually you come to this from a place of wanting to do something that you’re passionate about, because you find great joy in sitting with the plants and working with plants and working with people potentially.

So it’s important that no matter what you choose to do in the future, that you do it with what feeds not only you, but your garden, so that your garden grows strong and you grow strong. So it feeds more than the table, it feeds the soul. And I think that, as I said earlier, the herbalists have a chance to really connect people to the earth, reconnect people to the earth, reconnect their communities to the earth in a time when people are more disconnected than ever. And herb businesses are a wonderful way to do that. So I hope not just to caution you, but to inspire you to go with your dreams and that we really need you, and we really need you to do things in a creative and outside of the box kind of way so that our world can continue to flourish even under very intense, other intense kinds of things that are going on.

So this is going to be where the hope comes from and where other more generations will be able to have that hope also because of you creating something that feeds you, your garden and the earth. So I really encourage you to just go for it and follow your dreams and quit whatever job that makes you unhappy and do something that is for the earth and for the plants. I really thank you for listening to me and hope that this gives you some ideas of how to move forward. So have a wonderful, wonderful herbal filled life. From Nicole Telks at the Wildflower School of botanical medicine.

So I hope you can appreciate Nicole’s wisdom there. She’s been doing this for many, many, many years, Obviously has worked in all different aspects of making money as an herbalist. And, you know, it’s a very valid path. We definitely need a lot more herbalists. And as our entire medical system comes to transformation, we definitely need more people that are knowledgeable and skilled in growing and producing and helping others. So stay in touch with Nicole. Click on that button to the right. That will take you to her Wildflower school of herbal medicine. That’s one option for you.

And Nicole has a lot of wisdom, and she’d be more than happy to guide you. You can contact Nicole through that link also. So click on that button to the right to stay in touch with Nicole Talcs. And of course, the entire home medicine package is on the button just down below that. We have 44 presentations this year. Just an amazing assortment. And I also have a little special bonus for you if you pick up the whole package. And I’m kind of nervous, kind of excited. It’s nothing real big, but it’s definitely different. So you want to take the bonus.

Take a look at the bonus that we added with that package. Click on the button there to check out the sales page and to pick up the whole summit package. This is Marjorie Wildcraft, and if you got some more time, we definitely have more presentations for you here at the home medicine Summit.
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