Interested in starting your own entrepreneurial journey in agriculture but unsure what to expect? Then read up on our interview with Hank Adams, CEO of Rise Gardens, located in Chicago, IL, USA.

What's your business, and who are your customers?

Rise Gardens designs state-of-the-art indoor hydroponic produce gardens that make it easy for anyone to grow their own food. The system makes a complicated process productive and fun for gardeners constrained by busy schedules, short growing seasons, extreme weather, or lack of access to settings friendly for growing. The modular, Wi-Fi-connected garden platform allows for expansion and enables the growth of a wide variety of greens and vegetables. Founded in 2019 and backed by $3.1M in seed funding from investors, including True Ventures and the Alexa Fund, Rise Gardens encourages better nutrition and healthy lifestyles by helping people grow their own food year-round and by partnering with schools to build nutrition education in the classroom.

Tell us about yourself

After achieving success in the sports business world, I wanted my next company to make a lasting impact in the world. I decided that helping to fix the broken food system, which contributes to poor health, depleted soils, and environmental degradation was a good place to start. In addition, I have had a lifelong passion for gardening, starting as a boy growing strawberries in my home state of Colorado.

As an adult, since moving to the midwest, I became frustrated that I could not grow vegetables during the winter. I was struggling in the summertime as well. We have a lot of tree coverage and a couple of local rabbits and chipmunks who are far more resourceful and determined than I am. It occurred to me that hydroponics and indoor gardening could solve the problem. I tried a couple of commercial systems, but they were cheap, loud, and not very productive. They were novelty growing systems, I found out, without circulating water and simple one-part nutrients, which didn’t produce very robust or tasty produce. Nor was there much variety to choose from - only herbs and greens. In some cases, they did not even use hydroponic technology, opting for time-release nutrients and still (dead) water. So I built a real system with pumps, circulating water, and multi-part nutrients. It worked well, but I had to keep it in the basement because it was made of PVC and purple grow lights on metal shelving. I resolved to build something that I could show off proudly. One that would grow a wide variety of nutritious plants quickly and easily in an attractive package.

What motivates me on a daily basis is keeping sight of our mission at Rise Gardens, which is to inspire people to be conscientious consumers of healthy food and to connect them to the food they eat by helping them to grow their own produce year-round. If we can make people grow far more of their own food - indoors and out - then we will have a profound impact on people’s health and the health of the environment.

What's your biggest accomplishment as a business owner?

Knowing that we’re succeeding in helping people grow a lot of healthy, nutrient-dense food. Rise Gardens was nothing more than the proverbial drawing on a napkin when we started. It has evolved so much over the short life that you wouldn’t recognize it from where we started. We now have a great set of investors, a very innovative and talented team that keeps pushing the product forward, and, of course, a rapidly growing base of amazing customers who surprise us every day with what they’re growing in their Rise Garden. I take great satisfaction in knowing that we are delighting them and helping them feed their families.

What's one of the hardest things that comes with being a business owner?

Balancing all the demands on your time: managing a team, recruiting new employees, raising money, engaging in product decisions, listening to customers, etc. There are many hats you have to wear, and they all seem important. I want to build an empowered team so that I’m not a bottleneck to growth. But you have to balance that with keeping your vision at the forefront and staying lean. It’s a constant juggling act.

What are the top tips you'd give to anyone looking to start, run and grow a business today?

  1. If you want to be an entrepreneur, go work for an entrepreneur. Full disclosure, someone did tell me that, and it altered my focus and direction in a significant and beneficial manner. I was on the verge of going to work for a telecom company where I would have been buried five levels down doing spreadsheets. Instead, I got thrown into the fire and learned way more than I ever could have at a higher-paying, less interesting job.
  2. There is no destination in Performance Marketing. It is an endless cycle of fine-tuning, discovery, close analysis, and more spending. Experienced marketers know that all marketing is a continuous loop, and improvement is not linear. I entered this business with some shaky assumptions about the linear trajectory and have discovered that different groups behave differently, and each has its own seasonal and market-driven realities.
  3. Fail fast. It’s a common trope these days, but it wasn’t so common back when I started, and I’m still susceptible to grinding it out past when I should give up.

Where can people find you and your business?

Website: https://risegardens.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/risegardens
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/risegardens/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/risegardens
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/risegardens/

If you like what you've read here and have your own story as a solo or small business entrepreneur that you'd like to share, then please answer these interview questions. We'd love to feature your journey on these pages.

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