VIDEO 2 TRANSCRIPT

THE 3 TYPES OF FOREST-LIKE SYSTEMS

In the online business world, through an Industrial Revolution lens, you set your business up like a factory. Input money into the Facebook ads machine and it spits out views or purchases. Input people into your funnel and it spits out buyers. You see your business as a machine, which makes it so you and your team are cogs in the machine.

There are right and wrong ways to do business in this factory model, so you follow a formula given to you and make everything as efficient as possible.

Let’s compare this with Nature’s systems. Ecosystems. Look around the world and there are ## different ecosystems that are responsive to the other ecosystems that are around them.

There is no one right way because the right-ness of one system depends on the climate, the geography, the species that wander in and out.

If we drill in a bit, and focus on the forest-like systems that are highly abundant and self-reliant, you find 3 types:

The Oak Savannah

The Recovering Forest, and

The Mature Forest

The key piece in all of these is what? Trees. Mature trees that create stability for the long-term. Along with this are other perennial plants.

A perennial plant is a plant that continues growing year after year, versus an annual plant which needs to be replanted by you year after year. An example of perennial plants that we eat include artichoke and asparagus — these vegetables can be planted once and year after year they bloom and grow food, themselves. Trees obviously fall into this category too – apple trees, hazelnut trees – once you plant the tree and it grows a few years to maturity, it will produce a ridiculous amount of fruit every single year. Compare this with what we consider standard food crops – annual plants like lettuce and carrots — with annual plants you harvest the plant – you pick the head of lettuce or the carrot, and the plant dies. You wait through the fall and winter and in spring you have to work again to prepare the soil and plant seeds to grow the plants again. When you center a system around perennial plants, you do less work. Not only do you not have to plant again each year, but perennial plants fertilize the land for you. All those leaves that a tree drops in the fall? When you don’t wastefully rake it up and set it on the curb, it protects the ground, and decomposes to create more fertility. With this shedding of leaves, with this death, comes life.

In our forest-like systems, we center around trees and perennial plants. The plants that do most of the work for us, once they’re established. And from there we can plant as many annual plants as we like, I mean, carrots are my favorite vegetable… but we do so with full awareness that those plants require human work, they don’t take care of themselves.

So back to our 3 types of Food Forests:

The Oak Savannah, The Recovering Forest, and The Mature Forest

Let’s start with the Oak Savannah – with the Oak Savannah there are trees, but there is quite a bit of open land between the mature trees. There’s a lot of grassland with trees and shrubs interspersed within. The open tracts of land allow for lots of herbaceous crops, ground cover, annual plants, all because the sun reaches the ground in abundance.

I’m going to go through each of these 3 before bringing them back to your business so one second please.

The Oak Savannah provides the most variety of crops because of its open canopy, but it also requires the most maintenance because it is the least centered around our big trees.

With this system you will need to be in there on a weekly if not daily basis to maintain it and tend to it.

It produces a ton of crops and variety, but requires the most human intervention.

Onto the Recovering Forest.

In the Recovering Forest there are clusters of larger trees that provide a partial canopy with some sun reaching the ground. In those spaces shrubs and some annual crops can grow. In earthly ecosystems these often exist after wildfires, and eventually become a Mature Forest.

A Recovering Forest provides an abundance of perennial crops, and also some annual crops. It has less variety than the Oak Savannah, but requires less work. It does still require work – but you don’t need to be in the thick of it everyday.

The Mature Forest is the most obvious.

With a Mature Forest – when you step into it it is dark with life. A full canopy of trees shade the ground, preventing sunlight from hitting the soil. The Mature Forest takes time to establish.

The focus here is really on those big trees, with some shade-tolerant plants growing below.

It’s excellent for growing fruits and nuts and even lumber, and specific shade-tolerant understory plants like currants, but it doesn’t have the variety that the Oak Savannah does. The trade off of course is that it is LOW maintenance. Once it’s established it is pretty much taking care of itself. Except during harvest time.

Okay. So what the heck does this mean for your business?

If you remember our quiz from the last video, you know that you have your own preferences and inclinations + your mission and vision of the business impacts its future.

The size of the organism that you are creating and the amount of energy that you want to put into your business on a weekly or monthly basis leads to different business designs… or food forest types.

With the Oak Savannah – you have variety. You get to show up with your full creativity and flow with your desires for your business. Maybe that’s working with people one-on-one and completely customizing your work for them. It’s not super replicable. It’s bespoke. Or maybe you pump out new workshops and trainings and courses every year. You get to follow your excitement, but that also means you have to create new marketing, operations, messaging, all the things for each new thing that you put out. With the Oak Savannah you’re the center of your business so you have to be present in your business every week to guide the vision. In terms of marketing you rely on lean platforms like Instagram that you can easily pivot on.

On the other side, with the Mature Forest you have externalized most of your expertise and genius to be housed in your business. They are growing like large canopy trees. Your business stores all of that power so that it is self-regulating and self-reliant. You have one, or maybe a few established offers that have created a name for themselves and that take your people on a set journey, versus being customized. Your branding is recognizable and consistent over the years. You’re niched down so that your messaging is consistent and focused. You establish longterm marketing channels that work for you, like search engine optimization, paid ads, and content marketing. You know exactly how people find you, have a channel for them to come into your ecosystem, and go deeper.

In between those two, with the Recovering Forest – there is some play between the two. You will have a few established offerings that allow you to serve your people one-to-many that you have to run a few times and maybe even have them selling evergreen. Your business has a clear mission and a clear group of people or purpose you serve, but you still flow with your excitement around it, maybe offering different workshops from time to time, creating courses on a whim from divine inspiration. And maybe you still like the creative control of going on social media to share and connect.

If you answered mainly A’s in the quiz, you most likely will thrive setting up your business like an Oak Savannah-style system.

If you answered mainly B’s — Recovering Forest.

And if you answered mainly C’s then you’d most likely love having your business setup Mature Forest-style.

I’ll put the quiz again below — and a friend forwarded this to you and you want the transcript, workbooks, and all the things, head on over to thedirtyalchemy.com/forest to optin to this whole series before it’s taken down.

Here’s the QUIZ from yesterday if you forgot to take it:

1. How hands-on do you ultimately want to be in your business? (Think 3+ years from now?

A. I actually love my work! I want to be working hands-on every week in my business (knowing that work is 80%+ in my zone of genius and can be full- or part-time depending on my preferences)

B. I want to be in my business but with a very flexible schedule. A ton automated or handed off to a team, but I still want to be making the main decisions and the creative source

C. I want to be very hands-off — mainly collaborating with my business in a visionary role

2. Do you want to be the face of your business, or have your business/brand be the “face”?

A. I want to be the face of my business

B. It doesn’t matter to me — whatever serves the mission!

C. I like being behind the scenes + would rather my business/brand become famous 

3. How much visibility do you want you/your business to have in 5-10 years?

A. I don’t care about visibility, I just care about having satisfying work + a lush income.

B. I’d like to be a respected name + go-to person/brand in my industry

C. Yeah bitch, I want me/my business to be FAMOUS! I see my work featured on Oprah or on the cover of Times…

4. In 5 years how much money would you love your salary/profit to be?

5. In 5 years how big of a team do you want?

A. Solo-preneur automating as much as possible

B. Lean team with 1-2 people supporting you taking annoying stuff off your plate

C. I’d love my business to give more people more fulfilling work/careers

6. In 10 years, what do you want to be known for?
(Don’t freeze from this question – if you’re newer in business then it’s totally normal to be unsure, but the best advice I can give is to commit to something and go all in – this is the best way to know for sure AND you get to change directions anytime you like, with no negative repercussions)

7. Is that similar to or different than what you’re doing now?

8. What is the ultimate goal of your business?

A. I want a fulfilling career that impacts the world for the better.

B. I want a self-reliant business that provides fairly passive income for my desired lifestyle.

C. I want to build a legacy for my family and/or my community and/or my industry.

D. My mission is my life-blood and I am all in on drastically changing the world through my business.

So, obviously quizzes are oversimplifications, so if you don’t fit into a certain box, or you’re like “I KNOW I want a Mature Forest, or a Oak Savannah, even if my quiz says otherwise” — run with it!!

Remember from my podcast episode from Nov 2, 2023 “The 3 phases of setting up a regenerative business model” – there are 3 phases to building a regenerative system, the first one being the setup or installation stage. No matter how hands-off you want your business to be it will still require your hands on in the beginning, or increased human intervention in any stage in which you’re trying to expand. That doesn’t mean you’re screwed, or that it’s not working, or that you’ll be stuck grinding forever – it’s simply apart of a process, and a phase that will pass, assuming you’re intentionally designing a regenerative business system.

So how exciting is this?? You now have a clear type of food forest-style system to install in your business. Make sure you comment below which one you are so we can see and celebrate you.

In the next video we’ll dive into the 7 layers of every food forest that you want to establish in your business, so head to the next video now, or schedule some time tomorrow or this weekend to do that.