Reconnecting with nature

Editor's Note: Jim Paluch, president of JP Horizons, is a motivational speaker, writer, and founded "Come Alive Outside."

Q: What’s your elevator pitch for Come Alive Outside?

A: I can say to somebody that Come Alive Outside is just putting a name and an identity to what our profession brings to people. We help people come alive.

And some will not need a lot of details. But, “Yeah, but what is it,” will generally follow. Come Alive Outside creates the awareness and the intention and the opportunity to live a healthier lifestyle outside.

Whether we are retailers, landscape architects, nursery and greenhouse growers, or landscape maintenance, people, we have this opportunity to help people come alive outside.

Some still say, “Yeah, but what is it?” It’s how you feel when you go outside. It’s our chance to reconnect with nature. It’s putting a name to what we do.

Q: What inspired you to come up with this, well, I’m not sure what to call it — program, movement, organization?

A: It was truly a response to the concept of sustainability. We started hearing so much across the disciplines of the landscape profession of creating sustainable landscapes and we gotta be more sustainable and the green movement and everything became green from the soles of our tennis shoes to the shaving cream that we use.

We started brainstorming how we could take the concept of sustainability and make it something that a home owner or a professional gardener or an amateur gardener coming into a gardener center can relate to. And so we started thinking about what do we really want people to do and that’s when Come Alive Outside was born.

As we started talking about it, what I started hearing is people saying, “My kids don’t get off the couch” and “When we were young, we used to go outside all the time.”

That’s when I realized that Come Alive Outside is more than just a marketing slogan. It could become a battle cry for all of us that care so much about what we offer through our profession.

Q: During your presentation at this year’s Nursery Growers of Lake County Ohio Field Day, you mention that you don’t have a TV in your house. Is that true?

A: It’s true.

Q: Not one in the house?

A: There’s not one in the house and really that was a conscious effort from years ago, 25 or 30 years ago, by my wife and I because of the messages that could potentially be brought into the house to our kids. In college, I was watching guys flunk out by spending too much time watching reruns of "Dallas." And so we just made that conscious effort to not have a TV.

Q: During that same presentation you mentioned that other green businesses are not the competition. The competition is companies that create items that keep people inside.

A: Anyone that is vying for the disposable income of households are our competitors.

So it could be somebody deciding whether they need a $70,000 or a $100,000 Lexus, or do they invest in vegetables to create an edible garden outside? It’s the luxury cars and other places where we can spend our disposable income and truly that’s competing against golf courses and parks and anything that has to do with nature. It’s just evident.

Even when you go to restaurants you see families sitting and texting instead of talking. It’s created a totally different social structure than what maybe our parents knew. We can think positive and hope that in the 2030s and the 2040s that it’s all led to a good thing, but it sure seems like it’s leading to less and less awareness of the human element of nature, of communication as it was meant to be, and is going to lead to more of an individualized lifestyle.

Q: To get people to “Come Alive Outside” instead of being glued to their smart phones or TVs indoors, I understand that you encourage other green businesses to plan events.

A: Our first motivation for helping people and encouraging people to do events was simply to just do something that helps people get outside, to reconnect with nature, to just remember what it feels like to get our hands dirty or grass stains on our knees.

So the original goal was just simply to do something in the community to draw people together. The next goal that has emerged is that we are positioning our profession, the green profession, the landscapers and the retailers and the garden centers to be in the center of the community and community leaders.

And so what has happened is this business model has emerged where we can capture business opportunities. Because we have to. We’re business people. We’re entrepreneurs.

Q: Can you give me an example of someone who has successfully created a Come Alive Outside event to benefit the community and his/her business?

A: Zech Strauser, who owns Strauser Nature’s Helps, heard about Come Alive Outside, and he went to his town council and said, ‘We have to draw attention to get people outside.’ And so they did. He started doing some little community events. He started becoming involved with the economic development board.

He said, 'Let’s pull community leaders together and let’s get them working together to work on parks and work on open spaces. We can all collaborate on this together.’ So the hospitals came and the banks came and the newspapers came and the auto dealers came and he had 100 people show up for his Come Alive Outside event underneath the tent. Now he has an action team.

They’re working on a Come Alive Outside park. They just declared themselves a Come Alive Outside community. Zech knows that he’s helping them to become more aware of nature, and by doing that it is also leading to great business opportunities for him.

People are more aware of his company. Come Alive Outside has now become this commonality that we can have with our customers.

FOR MORE: http://comealiveoutside.com

Michelle Simakis is the associate editor of sister publication Garden Center magazine.