Christy Ross – Founder & CEO of Planted Places
Episode 89
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Transcript
Kara Goldin:
Perfect. Okay, here we go. Hi everybody, it’s Kara at Unstoppable. I’m super excited, I have one of my oldest friends here and also incredible entrepreneur. I’m so excited that I was able to get her on today, Christy Ross. Welcome, Christy.
Christy Ross:
Thank you, Kara, I’m so excited to be here. Just love you, love what you’re doing, so I’m excited
Kara Goldin:
You too, so excited. So Christy is the founder and CEO of Planted Places and we’re going to talk a little bit about Christy’s journey. But just to give you a little bit of background, she’s a seasoned entrepreneur with over 25 years of experience in technology. I want to say, you may or may not be able to see her but she looks like she’s 25, not 25 years of experience. But she’s had lots of incredible companies that she’s worked with and start her own company as well, primarily in the consumer e-commerce space, as well as finance technology. But she started this company back in… What year was that, the Great Entertaining?
Christy Ross:
Oh, wow. Yeah, that was like 1997, 1998. [crosstalk]
Kara Goldin:
Wow, so this would be the end of the ’90s, incredible parties, an e-commerce parties company. Pretty much the first one that was doing packaging them up, it was a brilliant idea.
Christy Ross:
It was pre-PayPal, if you remember that. It was like, oh my God, we had to build everything from scratch. Yes.
Kara Goldin:
It was wild. Based in San Francisco and anyway, Christy’s has been at Intuit, she’s bill.com, like I said, PayPal, she’s done a bit there as well. And she really looked at the space that she’ll talk to us a little bit about as following her passion. She’s always, it’s fun to talk about her and what she’s always enjoyed, it’s always been lots of other stuff. And also, she’s always gardening and doing these incredible things. And pulling me to the Sunset house down in Palo Alto or Menlo, just to go see what’s going on. She’s just always been really excited about it, so I’m excited that she’s able to take that passion and really develop a business around it.
And she went to Harvard business school. She was actually, recently was in a competition there and she was a finalist at the 2020 Harvard New Venture Competition, which is super, super cool. She’s great and I can’t wait to hear her thoughts and advice. She’s a real leader so I’m very, very excited to have her here. So welcome, welcome. First of all, tell me just a little bit about, how did you decide to really launch Planted Places?
Christy Ross:
Well, it’s so… Great question, there are so many different reasons why I did this. And you said the word passion, that was a big driver. You talked a lot about my career and what I’ve done, and I did spend… I always say when I’m starting a business myself, I do e-commerce or I do a consumer focus, but if I’m working for a company it’s in finance technology. It just always seems to be this trend I have, but I really wanted to do something that was focused on consumers, solving a problem, something I was passionate about. And gardening is really one of those areas for me and it’s really interesting, but a lot of it was around what had happened with technology because it is true that I do love technology and where that converges. And when I started my first company, we didn’t have anything, everything was ground up. I think we called blogs, bulletin boards. It was crazy back then.
Kara Goldin:
Totally.
Christy Ross:
So it was one of those things where I was working for PayPal and I literally was doing this competitive review of all Shopify and Magento and all those different things. And within 20 minutes and $25 later, I was like, “Oh my God, I’m on the web for business and this is great.” This was a couple of years ago and I was like, “Okay, wow. That was a million dollars and a hundred people back in ’98 or whatever. So that’s it, I’m doing it. I’m going to just jump in with this passion of mine and I’m going to figure it out, like all entrepreneurs do. So, that’s where the whole thing started.
Kara Goldin:
That’s wild. But the gardening side of it, you were always, that’s what you were doing on weekends, right?
Christy Ross:
Yeah, that’s my happy place. Yes, yes.
Kara Goldin:
And so how did you decide to put those two things together though, as a business?
Christy Ross:
It’s funny. Well, a lot of times, especially this is my second company I’ve done, you really have to love what you’re doing. And you know this better than anybody where it’s like, because there’s a lot of highs and lows. And you really want to pick something where it’s like, when the going gets… I’m going to figure this out. And so I wanted something I was really passionate about, but I also feel like from the health side of standpoint and just the environment and everything is going on in our world, it is important. Gardening, nature, the environment, that stuff is super important and it’s one of those things that when you do it, when you’re out there in the garden, it doesn’t matter. You could be on your container pots on your deck, wherever it is, there is just something magical about that.
And this is going to sound really funny, but when you’re gardening like I always have, and you get it right. You get the right plants, and the right location, and it’s low maintenance, all of a sudden you’re like, “Jam. I got it. I figured it out.” And I always would be talking to people and they’re like, “I don’t know, I have brown thumb. That’s not for me, I can’t do that. I’d love to learn, but I can’t do it.” And that was really where the idea was, you know what? But this actually, I want to bring this to people. And so that’s where it started, it was just like, let me go work with growers, let me get plant collections and let me figure this out for people.
And so they’re buying these products on my website and I’m sending it to them. And then it morphed into Living Walls because I really want to give people the ability who are living in a small space, not everybody has a big yard, a big garden. So Living Walls are huge, there’s so many health benefits to that. So then I really evolved that into garden kits for Living Walls and this is an interesting journey. And I’m sure many entrepreneurs can talk about this, but what happened along the way was as I was doing that, I started getting people going, “Okay, I love what you’re doing, but can you do it for me? I want you to do it for me.” And I was like, “Ooh, I want to teach you how to do it.” But they’re like, “No, I want you to do it.”
So I was in this interesting and as an entrepreneur, you’re getting the revenue coming in, they’re paying you. So you’re like okay, but what was happening with me was I was like, “I’m glad I’m doing this, but I want to bring this to more people.” And when you’re doing custom walls, you’re limited to the people who can afford it and also, you’re limited geographically. And so I had this client and we were doing this beautiful succulent wall. It was like 14 feet by five feet high, it was this beautiful wall and she had a raised bed underneath it. And she was like, “I’m trying to figure out what to do over in that corner.” And I’m like, “Let’s grow produce on that because you’ve got the raised bed there.” And she’s like, “Oh my God, I would love to do that. How do we do that?”
And I was laughing because I’m like, “I don’t know. I don’t know how to do that.” And so that was the birth of where I brought the company to is I thought, if I can figure out how you grow organic produce, living soil. You got to be using soil because that’s really the healthiest way to do it. If I can figure out how to do that on a wall, that solves so many problems for people. And so I went to work on that. I basically kept doing my ornamental side of my business but I was an R&D hub on the other side, trying to figure that out. Partnered with some growers, did a bunch of testing, designed a system and lo and behold, here we are today where I separated my business out. I’ve got my ornamental business and I’ve got my farm wall business.
Kara Goldin:
That’s awesome. So there was no book that you could go to. I mean, there were a lot of different books, right?
Christy Ross:
Yeah.
Kara Goldin:
For different pieces of it, or different websites and stuff that you were looking at. I love that because people are always like, “Oh I wish I could go to one place to learn this.” And I’m like, “That’s what entrepreneurism is all about.” There’s no [crosstalk] go here and do this, otherwise someone would have done it before. So I think that’s what’s so great, what you did.
Christy Ross:
Well, and it’s so true. And what’s funny too, is everybody is so different. How they learn, what is specific for their business and honestly, the one thing that probably helped me more than anything was going, “I got to get out of my head.” So many entrepreneurs stand in their way. And it was one of these things where I was listening, and I would always listen to podcasts. I’d be driving to different conferences, sites, and I had my podcasts on, I’m listening to them. And there was this guy that came on one time and he just started talking about getting out of your mind. Get out of your head, you’re sitting there living in fear and all these things. And you don’t even know it but it’s basically causing you to make decisions and do things that are just, you’re in your way. And that was so pivotal for me because I was like, “I’m doing that.”
Kara Goldin:
Exactly. As you know, my book is a lot about this and it’s called Undaunted: Overcoming Doubts and Doubters. And I talk about this all the time that people used to, when I’d be out speaking people would say to me, “Oh, you’re fearless. You’re just totally different.” Or, “You don’t have any doubts.” And I think I blurted out at one point a couple of years ago, “You have no idea who I am.” And I was like, “I have doubts every single day. And I have all of these times along the way where everything was going great, and then it collapses.” Then I’m like… And then you have to figure out like, where is that little grain of good and where can I take that? And that is the story of good entrepreneurs that, when you really hear their stories they have plenty of down days and plenty of failures along the way.
Christy Ross:
So true.
Kara Goldin:
And they just have to keep getting up and making decisions. And sometimes the decisions aren’t easy, you’ve got to let people go, or you’ve got to talk to suppliers about really hard things, or raise money or whatever. There’s just a lot of components to it, so I think the more people hear these stories, they start to feel less alone, too. And it doesn’t really matter what the industry is, whether you’re doing water or organic farms or widgets of any sort, it’s all kind of the same thing.
Christy Ross:
And what’s interesting too, about what you’re saying, it’s also you’re the leader of the company. So you might be having one of those days where you’ve got doubts and you’ve got to stand up in front of everybody. And be that cheerleader and keep everybody going, especially now with what we’re going through with COVID. Those are the things people don’t talk about and those are the things where you’ve got to be strong for everybody else, too. And I think that’s something that-
Kara Goldin:
No, I think it’s really critical. So the model on this, so you went during COVID, you were already researching it even before COVID.
Christy Ross:
Yeah, yeah. I even laugh, Kara, because I always think, “God, you know what?” And this is so true, but business will move and that’s what you got to just keep going because it’s always going to work out, but it may not work out the way you think it’s going to work out. So you got to give it time to move through the evolution of what it’s going to do. And so I always laugh and say, “God, I wish I was six months ahead of myself.” Because then when COVID hit, I was still building a lot of my backend systems to be able to scale and do things. And I was like, “Oh God, I can’t bring on people too fast.” But it was so timely because think about it, now more than ever, people are… There was a while there in March and April where the grocery stores were empty.
I remember one time I went to Whole Foods and took a picture because the entire produce section was empty. And I was like, “Oh my God, that’s a little weird.” In part, it was cleanliness, people, “Where’s my food coming from?” So you have that safety issue but then there’s just a whole larger issue up there in terms of our supply chain. And there’s data out there, in fact, we’re writing a blog about this right now, where there’s like 60 years of basically topsoil left in the U.S. for farming. So it’s big, I can’t wait for this blog to come out because we’re researching a lot about this and it’s a big deal. So people need to learn what does it mean to grow in soil because- [crosstalk]
Kara Goldin:
And people just don’t understand that and the importance of it. And the vitamins and everything that’s coming to you, that’s incredible.
Christy Ross:
Right, exactly.
Kara Goldin:
So it’s a subscription box program. Tell me about the business products.
Christy Ross:
So it’s interesting because this is such great timing because we’re basically evolving into this new subscription business as well. So what we’ve been doing is, we sell a farm wall and with it comes a membership. And what that basically means is this farm wall is a self-standing, self irrigating, you basically plug it in or you can use a solar panel. And we send you seedlings year round and you’re farming off a wall. So you can be doing it-
Kara Goldin:
That’s amazing.
Christy Ross:
It’s pretty cool. But the membership’s important because number one, obviously we give you seedlings and soil and the things that you need. But we’re coaching you because we’re really focused on people that want to learn how to grow food but don’t know, because the people that know how to grow food, they’re going to buy it because they know and they see, “Oh God, I don’t want to bend over and I don’t have to amend the soil, this is awesome.” But I really want to expand that market. Okay, I love the stat there. Since COVID, as of June, since COVID started, 16 million new food gardeners, which basically is people growing food under the age of 35, since COVID. So basically it’s between March 14th and June, 16 million new people under the age of 35 growing food.
Kara Goldin:
That’s incredible.
Christy Ross:
And so there’s a huge demand. And so basically what was happening is in order to get started you do purchase, it’s like the Peloton, you buy your bike. You buy your farm wall and then you start. And what I was noticing around the marketplace, a lot of demand and a lot of people really nervous about just confidence around, “I don’t think I can do that. That is beautiful in your Instagram pictures and all this stuff, but I don’t think I can do that. I have a brown thumb.” And so I had this epiphany where I’m like, “Oh my God, I need to flip this over on its head and I need to launch a box subscription, which basically lets people baby step into it.”
We’re going to send you seedlings, we’re going to send you living soil. We’re going to send you grow pots, and we’re going to take you through the seasons so you can actually learn how to grow food. And in April, we’re going to send you tomatoes in a large grow pot so you can learn how you grow tomatoes differently. And we’re going to teach you all that using the farm wall. And so eventually, you get your confidence up and you want to grow more, you’re going to elevate up to the farm wall. But we’re going to reach many more people that maybe they don’t want to pay for a farm wall. Maybe they don’t have the ideal space but they do have space for some grow pods, that kind of thing. So, super exciting.
Kara Goldin:
That’s awesome. And what do you think is your biggest challenge?
Christy Ross:
Wow, that’s a great question because there’s always a lot of challenges. So I would say it is scale and what I mean by that is these are life products. So this is different than probably other subscription businesses if you think, everybody probably gets the coffee. You get your coffee or you get your dog food. You’ve got your things that come once a month to- [crosstalk]
Kara Goldin:
Your Hint subscription.
Christy Ross:
Of course, I’ve been doing that for years. I love that, but-
Kara Goldin:
But it does have a shelf life, but it’s not-
Christy Ross:
Yours does have it but it’s a little longer than I have, ours is literally a week. It’s a week and so we get the seedlings-
Kara Goldin:
That’s hard.
Christy Ross:
Yeah, so they’re not seeds. Our whole point is we got to get you to harvest quickly. And that’s part of it and if you’re a new farmer, you don’t want to wait six weeks, eight weeks for that seed to pop into something. You want two, three weeks, you know what I mean? And so that’s the importance and so what I’m doing is I’m going to be working with growers. And I’m currently doing that where these guys are growing for me and then they’re shipping it out for me, too. Once you get that network of growers across the U.S. you’re really dialed in. So I can get people in Florida, we’re basically looking at our tomatoes going, “Okay, they’re done in the next month.” Florida is just kicking off. I mean I wouldn’t say kicking off, but they’re still going strong. Arizona, still going strong. So people are doing different things and so it’s important to have that network. So that would probably be, that’s the thing that… I don’t want to say keeps me up at night, I’ve learned not to stay up at night these days.
Kara Goldin:
You know what I think is so fascinating about your experience though, too, is that you’ve worked in a bunch of different companies and obviously, went to business school too. But since graduating from college, and I feel like you’ve probably collected lots of things from big companies that were great. Everything from Intuit to starting your own company, and now you’re going and starting this company. And I feel like, I was actually doing an interview earlier and talking to some press about the fact, I started Hint in my late 30s. And people think that entrepreneurs, they graduate from college and then they do it. And people are putting these doubts in their own mind like, “I can’t go do something.” They’re sitting at home, their existing role is not going to necessarily be conducive to… Or maybe they’re just not really that interested, or maybe the company is laying people off or whatever.
I’m always saying whatever, age or the fact that you’ve never done a company should not be the thing that is your wall and stopping you from doing it. I feel like all of us have had so many years of experience too, but also in big companies and small companies that we know that there’s no magic. You just have to be willing and somewhat crazy enough to go and try all of these-
Christy Ross:
It’s interesting. That’s so interesting you say that because it’s like you take that learning, every place that you go where you’re just picking up lessons, picking up lessons. But then I always tell myself, “I am always going to be a student.” It was funny when I was at bill.com-
Kara Goldin:
Totally.
Christy Ross:
And I was there, one of the early executives and then was there for about five years and left. We were 40 customers when I got there, I left when there were 10,000. So I was there through all that growth, but it was B2B so I start my I consumer business and I’m like, “Okay, this is different. Christy, go be a student again.” And I popped in, “Social media marketing world, here I come!” And so I think that’s a big thing for entrepreneurs, you’re always going to learn, you’re taking your lessons, but man, don’t always think you know everything. You know what I mean?
Kara Goldin:
Yeah. Well, and I think also, you and I have talked about this too. I think also when you’re trying to figure things out and you’re starting a new company, I always talk about, I think you have a little bit of experienced people. But also people that are really passionate and want to dig in and learn because you really have to do a lot of the research. And try and put two and two together because things are not necessarily, they’re not going to be laid out nice for you, otherwise they would have already been done. And so you have to get people who are willing to just go and be the bees. And try and go and figure a lot of this stuff out. But I also feel like, and I always say it inside my own company, that you hire people who are smarter or people that know something that you don’t know because you’ll remain as an entrepreneur, educated. If you’re sitting there, the one that is always educating people actually versus being educated, you don’t seem motivated, you get frustrated.
Christy Ross:
That’s such a good point.
Kara Goldin:
Right?
Christy Ross:
Yeah. You do, you need to be… Yeah.
Kara Goldin:
You want people who are telling you something that you don’t know and also reaching out to a network of your friends that you’ve known through all of these different roles like, “How do I do this?” Or whether it’s raise money or PR or whatever, just find your network too and go and just reach out to them.
Christy Ross:
Network is so important. In fact, Kara, this totally reminds me of when I was starting my company, the first one back in the late ’90s. And I remember, this completely plays out exactly what you just said. I remember going to you back then and going, “Oh my God, I need to find somebody who does this.” And you were just, you got that Rolodex out and I remember you just made those introductions. And honestly, that allowed me to get… That was the difference in getting me to that next level. You know what I mean? It was truly going and reaching out and finding those networks.
Kara Goldin:
Well, I think that’s the thing that I found was so unique is the tech industry was very much, I feel like that’s where I learned that networks were… And it was okay not to have all the answers, it was like solving a puzzle that never really ended. Building on it and that’s sort of how I describe entrepreneurism today, I really do believe that the best entrepreneurs view it as, it doesn’t end. There’s just more and more, you can only see so far maybe, but it just keeps adding on and you have to sort of enjoy that. If you’re somebody who wants to solve the puzzle and sell your company tomorrow or whatever, then the likelihood of you actually reaching that goal is very low. Instead, you should be sitting here saying, “We’re building, it we’re moving it in this direction and-”
Christy Ross:
No, and it’s true. And it’s like knowing what the ending is going to be. You don’t know what… People will just be like, “Okay, I need to know what that story is going to end like.” Well, actually you don’t know because it’s an ever evolving story and it will change quick.
Kara Goldin:
It’s so true. So, best advice you’ve ever received?
Christy Ross:
Oh, wow. This is a more recent one because of course, we’ve all had a lot of advice along the way, but it’s really a little affirmation or something I say to myself. But because we’ve been thrown some doozies in the last couple of months, in terms of just with COVID and everything going on. And so what I tell myself when I’m sitting there and it’s going the way I don’t want it to go. I’ll say to myself, “Everything always has been, is now, and will be just fine.” That’s what I tell myself and I got to you, it’s magic. I say it out loud. I slow down, I say it out loud really slowly, and it’s weird. It just puts that switch in your head and you’re like, “Okay, go to work.” You know what I mean? But I mean, that’s sounds kind of-
Kara Goldin:
No, I think that’s totally true, I do that. I don’t say that exact thing, but I do that. Actually for me, especially lately, even when COVID hit for me, we were running Hint during the 2009 financial crisis and it was a big time for me. And so I actually walked into COVID when I was watching a lot of people just fall and just freaking out. And I think for me, actually having been through some other challenging periods between the financial crisis, 9/11, like lots of things, I was able to be like, “It’s not good, but it’s going to be okay.” But I can’t exactly… The windshield is not cleaning properly. I felt I could try to see through but there were so many things that are different from these other periods and so many things that are similar. But I think more than anything to your point, I knew it was going to be okay it’s just, it was going to be rocky. And there were going to be aspects that were going to be rocky and we had to focus on parts that we knew we could keep moving forward, more than anything.
Christy Ross:
So true. It’s like try not to have too many expectations. We were talking about this right before the call started, which is this whole concept of because of COVID and everything is so up in the air. I try not to have too many expectations because you don’t know what’s going to happen. You’re like, “Okay, is my grower… Is there going to be a fire up in Sonoma where some of my growers are, and they’re going to shut…” You’re constantly contingency plan, contingency plan. I feel like I’m constantly in that state so that you’re ready should something happen.
Kara Goldin:
And that’s a really good point. I think that for us I always… Contingency plans are something that, I don’t know, you don’t really normally write those into business plans when you’re a brand new entrepreneur. But I think the idea of having a little bit of paranoia and certainly through COVID, I think we’ve all learned that. I think that definitely, it will be a question going forward. How did you handle, how did you grow your business? What do you think you did wrong? I think the authenticity of you being able to own things during this really challenging time will actually speak volumes to who you are as a leader, no matter what size. I think everybody’s had challenges and they’ve been different. And more than anything-
Christy Ross:
Right, right. I think too, just positivity is so important, especially in times like this. There’s always two sides, right? This is something people always talk about, but there’s just two sides to it. And a part of me is like, “You know what? I’m going to launch a brand new product and business model and actually take this company to a whole another level, in the middle of a pandemic.” That’s crazy. A lot of people might think that, “You’re crazy.” But I’m like, “No, actually, this is the right time to do it.” [crosstalk]
Kara Goldin:
It’s totally the right time to do it. So I always ask this one last question. What makes you unstoppable?
Christy Ross:
Oh, wow. You know me so well, I just keep going. I just think of so many, it’s like, you just keep going. It’s probably not the best answer, but it’s my answer. I just keep going, nothing really stops me. You figure it out. You’re going to have your down days but you just keep going. And you don’t look at things as failures, they’re just lessons, there’s no failures. We had something happen last week in the business and everybody’s like, “Oh, I’m so sorry.” I’m like, “Hey, you know what guys? This is just one big lesson and this is great. Now we know next time and then let’s move forward. Let’s not-”
Kara Goldin:
Very true and it’s totally the right way to look at things. So where do people find… So Planted Places, obviously, if you haven’t visited it’s plantedplaces.com. And where do people find Christy Ross on social?
Christy Ross:
Wow. I’m in LinkedIn, just my name, Christy Ross. LinkedIn but I think, I got a LinkedIn way early in life, so I actually have my name.
Kara Goldin:
Christy Ross, so just C-H-R-I-S-T-Y. Ross, R-O-S-S. And-
Christy Ross:
And I just post to Instagram, Facebook, Planted Places. I do it all through my business. And I’m huge on Pinterest, but that’s slightly different.
Kara Goldin:
And they’re beautiful. If you want to dream about the perfect garden and what could be with the farming, you do such a nice job. So you really, you’re a good teacher on that, definitely. So, that’s awesome.
Christy Ross:
It’s fun, I love it. I love it. [crosstalk]
Kara Goldin:
Well, thanks everybody and if you liked this podcast, definitely give it great reviews and subscribe and share it. And tell everybody about it, we’re here every Monday and Wednesday. And hoping to inspire lots of people to learn and keep going. And keep trying, as Christy was saying. So anyway, thanks everybody. Have a great week.
