Greetings all,
Before I ask what I'm posting here to ask, I'll provide a bit of context.
I've been spending a lot of time trying to figure out what I want, and am able to bring myself, to pursue financially. An idea that I've been poking at in my mind for a while is doing freelance consulting for people who are interested in making their property more regenerative or at least more
sustainable. I don't have a whole lot of hands on
experience yet but I have spent a large portion of the past 5 years researching
permaculture on my own, watching and listening to lectures, reading, talking to people, etc. I volunteered at a farmer's market with a garden attached back in 2012 and we were implementing some
permaculture thinking to what we did there. I also took a
class called Home
Permaculture Design this spring at a Unitarian Church near where I live and ended up taking care of some of my teacher's garden while he was out of town after the class was over. Since 2013 I've been building soil and experimenting on my own in my backyard and during the class that I took I created a design for the whole backyard which I'm currently working on implementing to turn it into a mostly
perennial and fairly diverse little berry and pollinator thicket (with other plants and a bit of space for annuals on the side nearest the house as well of course). I've also attended a couple annual NE Ohio
Permaculture Potluck gatherings with guest speakers and talked to a few people there.
I recently contacted a
local organization called Green Triangle through which I attended a natural building workshop this year and asked them about the possibility of a
PDC course this year or next year in my area. They had one in 2015 (with Peter Bane, Mark Cohen, Jonathan Hull, Marilyn McHugh, Chris Kennedy, Allison Hurley, and other local guests). I'm hoping to hear back from them as I'd really like to do this course in person. I've looked into the
Permaculture Design Course and Certification on
openpermaculture.com/Regenerative Leadership Institute and am considering that as an alternative but I would really prefer to do it in person and work on my networking skills with local people at the same time.
Now to my question(s) to whoever may be reading this...
Do you think freelance regenerative landscape consulting seems like a practical way to make a decent amount of money? (below I will try to address some of the other variables that would influence answering this)
Not necessarily
enough to live on, I plan to do other things as well, just to have a significant impact on income. I have been pretty interested in the
residual income discussions on this site and have a lot of ideas for that as well as some stuff already made that could potentially result in residual income (if you want to check it out, my original music can be listened to and bought at
sporkflips.bandcamp.com).
As previously implied, I'm in Northeast Ohio.
I'd like to help people with surveying, planning, and creating designs for properties ranging from small urban plots to rural sites whether they have been previously used for conventional agriculture, are largely undeveloped, or whatever else.
I'm curious what people's ideas are of how much demand there may be for this, I'm not looking to charge a lot of money or claim that I am an expert obviously, just to help people become more regenerative and hopefully more self-sufficient while making some money to support my own goals.
I would hope that my target client base would be people who are either unfamiliar or not very familiar with permaculture and looking to make the biological systems in the space they manage more diverse and productive and that after working with me on their
project, they may feel more inclined to pursue further exploration on their own into permaculture thinking and practices.
I intend to talk to some of the people I know in the permaculture community around here about my intentions with this once I have a PDC and start looking online for work as well.
Do you have any suggestions for being found by people who may be interested in this type of service?
Are there other things that you think I should do besides completing a PDC course before I start to look for freelance consulting work?
To recap, even though I know I have an infinite amount to learn, I think that I do have a good deal to offer others in terms of understanding and interacting with systems. I am extremely passionate about the (re)generative potential of biology, diversity, and the human species and I think that I am good at considering a wide range of variables. I hope that through this kind of work I can gain more hands on experience while helping other people and generating some of the money needed to develop the kind of system that I hope to one day live as a part of.
Thanks for reading!
I hope that you all have good fortune in your endeavors.
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