Seven - Cactus & Tropicals
After the negotiations were complete, the deeds and notes were signed, and the greenhouse permit was waived, I was fired up and ready to go. It was 1983. I had eight years behind me selling plants – three in my plant shop called the Grass Menagerie, one in limbo as I resettled, and four with my first greenhouse business, Cactus Growers of Utah. I still didn’t have a plan or long-range vision of what my company would look like in the end, if there were an end. But I was starting to understand the meaning of entrepreneurship. I was in too deep to call my company an escape hatch or a hobby.
It was no longer just about plants or the products we sold. Cactus & Tropicals (though yet to be named) was forming its own psyche with a company ethos in the early stage of development. There was a growing staff spirit of collaboration and commitment and we were gaining a small but sincere community presence. Personally, I was feeling a stronger sense of stability and endurance and an increasing confidence that I could manage it – really make it into something lasting. I was certainly invested financially, but emotionally as well. I cared about it, like a weird mother.
I wanted it to grow strong and healthy. The future was a long way off but I was beginning to pay attention to what might be around the next corner. I was aware I needed to sharpen my skills at seeing “the light,” to take advantage of opportunities when they beckoned. I needed to pay better attention to the timing of things, too. I say that because, now looking back fifty years, I wonder if that five-year gap between the down payment and the balloon payoff with the Ericksons wasn’t too long. It probably should have been three years.
My buddy Stu, who helped me transform a boarded-up building into the Grass Menagerie, came from Denver to build the next two greenhouses. We started in October when the weather was beautiful, warm and dry. To begin we had to dig 46 post holes four-feet deep. This time we had a gas-powered augur and there was no need for charcoal briquets to thaw the ground like when the cactus house was built. We dug the post holes in two days instead of two weeks. Stu was a perfectionist with his string line and level, always on the bubble. As he cemented a row of posts in, he’d stand me in front of the first one and say, “how many posts do you see?”
“One,” I’d answer.
“Good,” he’d say. “That’s all you’re supposed to see.”
If the posts didn’t line up perfectly, every step that followed would be increasingly skewed until final attachments wouldn’t line up and therefore wouldn’t connect.
Nothing can put a person to sleep faster than reading the erector set instructions to build a greenhouse. But there were a couple of construction decisions that seriously impacted our future growth. The first had to do with the height of the greenhouse walls before the hoop starts to curve. The cactus house had four-foot side walls -- too short to attach another greenhouse to it. In order to connect multiple hoops, an eight-foot side
wall is required. The curve of the roof doesn’t begin until the bows (curved parts) are attached to the eight-foot-high posts. That allows a person to walk from one greenhouse bay into another. With a four-foot side wall, a person is forced to crawl. Second, the Essential Secret of future greenhouse additions laid in one critical piece: the “Y” yoke installed at the top of each post. The bow slips over one side of the “Y” while the other side just sits there, poking out, making it possible to come back later (years later if you want) and attach another greenhouse by slipping its bow on the other side of the “Y.” You remove the fiberglass wall and reattach it to the new outside wall. Voila, the hoops are joined and wide open! Thanks to lessons learned, I had the foresight to build the new greenhouses with eight-foot walls and “Y” yokes on the posts for just-in-case. Now we had 3,200 square feet for foliage, and the cactus house was back to its original self of 1,600 square feet.
I had to change the company name again. Still mortified by my original choice of Grass Menagerie, I needed to be clear about what we sold and I didn’t want to stray too far from our current name Cactus Growers of Utah. So I dropped “Growers of Utah” and replaced it with “Tropicals.” People called. “Hey, you changed your name, you’re selling fish, too? Do you have guppies?”