Virtual Learning On-Demand
Advance Your Communication Skills and Income in the Green Industry
Jumpstart the new year by advancing your communication skills and income in the Green Industry. Pathways to Professionalism, is a series of educational webinars dedicated to plant geeks, master gardeners, garden retailers, social media content creators and influencers, and other passionate plant people, who want to start or expand their knowledge while generating income in garden communications.
Basics of Using Instagram for Your Garden Business - Allison McManus
Ready to use Instagram in 2024 to grow your garden business but you’re feeling overwhelmed or not sure where to begin? No matter what part of the garden industry you are in, this session will help you discover best practices and strategies to begin using Instagram for your business. Learn what type of content to post to best reach your intended audience, develop strategies for writing hooks, captions, and Calls to Actions (CTAs), and much more. If this is the year you want to begin growing your business using Instagram, you won’t want to miss this webinar.
Plant Patents and Trademarks - Understanding Intellectual Property - Maria Zampini
Understanding Intellectual Property, Plant Patents, Trademarks, Plant Breeders Rights; They are essential to breeders and brands, and should also be important to garden communicators. What they mean, why and where they are used, and how you should reflect them when communicating to consumers and the green industry trade.
Do I Need an Agent? - Haley Casey and Kristina Sutton Lennon
A literary agent is an author’s inroad into traditional publishing. It’s a partnership wherein we use our experience in the industry to offer editorial advice, submit projects to editors, negotiate contracts, and push for every step of the process to benefit you as much as possible. An agent will almost always be necessary if you want to see you book in the hands of a major publisher. Traditional publishing can be a long road, however, and some others prefer the freedom of self-publishing and having full control over their own schedule and marketing.
Cultivating Your Resources: Finding Learning Opportunities and Reliable Information for Garden Communications - Amy Mullen
With the proliferation of social media influencer culture, garden misinformation has never been so common! As a communicator, your best plan for countering it is creating a personal reference library of on-line resources. In this class, professional garden designer Amy Mullen leads you through how to identify the best sources for reliable, science-based information. We'll also discuss her go-tos for specific topics, from sustainability to plant introductions, as well as where to find on-going education opportunities to deepen your knowledge.
How to Market Yourself Online - presented by Julie Joyce
Attendees will learn real, applicable tools, tactics and strategies for improving their marketing and connecting with a larger audience. Hear some common marketing mistakes and how to correct them, plus have your questions about promoting yourself and your work answered by an experienced marketer whose roots are in horticulture.
Optimizing LinkedIn to B.O.O.S.T.® Your Business Success - Kelly Leonard
Is your LinkedIn profile A.L.I.V.E.® - Accurate, Locatable, Impactful, Value-based, and Engaging? I’ve successfully trained 7k+ business professionals in our signature B.O.O.S.T.® methodology designed to help LinkedIn users to:
✔ Build Their Brand
✔ Optimize Relationships
✔ Obtain More Leads
✔ Secure Thought Leadership Space
✔ Tap into New Markets
Applying this same methodology in our business resulted in over $500k in new consulting revenue in our core business (CRM) through LinkedIn leads.
Use this signature B.O.O.S.T.® strategy for LinkedIn optimization to help increase revenue, build profitable strategic partnerships, connect with new clients, land dream jobs, stand up internal brand ambassadors, and more.
Get More Pathways to Professionalism On-Demand! Enjoy an additional 6 recorded sessions for only $20 per session designed to help advance your skills and income potential in the Green Industry.
Meet the Pathways to Professionalism Speakers
Allison McManus
Allison McManus is a garden content creator, co-owner of Spoken Garden with her husband, Sean, a co-inventor, and a speaker. She helps teach beginning gardeners about plant and flower care through their Spoken Garden Instagram account, YouTube channel, their quick “DIY Garden Minute” podcast, their Spoken Garden website, & their book “The First-time Gardener: Growing Plants and Flowers" published by Cool Springs Press in 2021. Allison has helped grow their company using social media and enjoys collaborating with many other garden companies as a result. She loves creating and sharing content on Instagram. She is a National Board-Certified Science educator and former middle school science teacher with a Master's in Teaching degree.
Maria Zampini
Maria is a 4th generation nurseryman and proud of it! After graduating from Penn State with a BS in Horticulture, she ran the family’s 1000 acre wholesale nursery, destination attraction garden center and new plant research and development division. She took a new path in 2009 partnering with her father to form UpShoot LLC, a boutique horticultural marketing firm focusing on sales, marketing and licensing of new plant introductions and gardening related products. In 2019 Maria partnered with Spring Meadow Nursery to develop the Proven Winners® ColorChoice® Flowering Trees program. Maria is a freelance writer for both green industry trade journals and consumer gardening magazines. She is co-author of the ASHS award winning book Garden-pedia: An A-Z Guide to Gardening Terms. Maria has spoken nationally and internationally on a variety of gardening related topics. Maria was the 1st female President of the Ohio Nursery & Landscape Association and International Ornamental Crabapple Society. Maria serves on the Advisory Board for the Painesville, Ohio Salvation Army, and is the Director of Marketing for both the Fairport Harbor Arts and Culture Alliance and the Village of Fairport Tree Commission in her local Fairport Harbor, Ohio community. Maria currently serves as the President of GardenComm: Garden Communicator’s International and was recently named to the Horticultural Research Institute Board of Trustees.
Haley Casey - Associate Agent — Creative Media Agency, Inc.
Haley Casey has always had a special place in her heart for stories, but it was when she wrote her first chapter book in fifth grade that her true love of literature was realized. She graduated from The University of Kansas with a bachelor’s degree in creative writing and attended the Denver Publishing Institute in 2015. She began her full-time career at Ogden Publications, where she was a magazine editor for four years, and then interned at Metamorphosis Literary Agency and Creative Media Agency before stepping into her role as an associate agent at CMA in 2020. She’s actively building her list is ready to assist her authors in achieving their publishing goals!
Amy Mullen
Amy Mullen is a garden designer, coach, blogger, plant geek, and one-woman marketing department at Spotts Garden Service in Indianapolis. A background in communications and marketing make her uniquely suited to demystifying gardening for clients and readers alike. She’s passionately interested in sustainability, garden history and design and pretty much anything to do with cats.
Julie Joyce
Julie Joyce is the founder of GreenID Marketing, a digital marketing agency with a focus on startups and new business endeavors. Julie grew up in the horticulture industry, in a family owned horticulture business that included a wholesale nursery. landscape design and retail garden center; this business that became her first client. With over 20 years experience of working within the horticultural industry, she has a unique perspective on what it takes to build a successful entrepreneurship. Julie is drawn to innovation and today her client portfolio includes a large variety of startups from various industries. In addition to providing social media management, she also manages strategy, e-commerce, and tactical campaign implementations. She loves the passion, energy and the wild ride of entrepreneurship and easily aligns with like-minded clients. Most importantly, Julie believes work should be fun, sustainable, and successful both financially and personally.
Kelly Leonard
Kelly Leonard is a podcaster, keynote, award-winning TV show host, and former Fortune 100 Executive. Through Kelly Leonard Consulting, she has successfully helped thousands of clients to launch new businesses, increase revenue, build profitable strategic partnerships, expand their visibility, land dream jobs/opportunities, and more using her signature B.O.O.S.T.® methodology for LinkedIn.