Why we love a live chat over on the Club

A year ago I decided to move the Club over here from YouTube. Why? Because Substack is a more versatile platform, and I wanted a place I could write, or podcast, or film. I wanted a place with more choice for me, the sender, and for the Club members too.

And so it has proved. The Club members love the chat option where they can talk to one another. And I love that if there’s something I want to consider that works better in writing than it would as a filmed clip, I can write. Equally, for regular tours of this flower farm, clips about creating sustainable floristry, I can still post YouTube style, with the usual exclusive Clubbers’ extra content of course.

But the best part of this Club has always been the live chats that we hold most Thursdays in term time at 5pm UK time. This cheerful hour is an opportunity for Club members and me to get together and discuss a topic that we think is worth considering. And the reason Substack is better than elsewhere for this kind of chat is that I can invite a guest from time to time, and we can have a chat with the Clubbers on a topic about which the guest has more knowledge than I.

My colleague Nicola (whom many of you know,) and I did a little maths the other day, and we worked out that over the years more than 10,000 students have done workshops and demos with Common Farm Flowers, both here at the farm and online.

As a business that pivots (as all small businesses must be prepared to do from time to time,) we learned to take our workshops and demos online during the pandemic. And that worked well for us.

Taking the workshops online meant that I could still make a living encouraging people to grow flowers for pleasure and for profit, to try more sustainable floristry techniques, to find solace and joy by getting close to their gardens, encouraging people to realise that by knowing and regularly reassessing the WHY of what they do, the HOW to do it is a much easier question to answer. And I could reach further than people who could make it physically to Common Farm in south east Somerset between fashionable Bruton, and up-and-coming Wincanton.

As time went by, and I regularly re-examined my WHY, I also realised that a club would fill the gaps between the teaching. A club would be a support system as well as an information sharing exercise.

During the pandemic Instagram kept encouraging me to do live chats, and said that I could encourage people to pay me for my time. But it was a bit chaotic for me. And frankly, Instagram was a shocking slow payer. But the reaction was enthusiastic and I was inspired. The ‘Live at Five’ format suited me. A Thursday 5pm UK-time slot was one I could generally commit to during term time. But I wanted a place where it was calmer, and the people who joined in the lives felt really part of a Club.

And so I started the Club on YouTube. But it still wasn’t quite right. I was conscious that sooner or later people might begin to find me as a talking head a bit repetitive. And it was hard to maintain communication between live sessions. It felt very me on send and there was little way for the Clubbers to engage other than just watch me speak. And then along came Substack with the chat option, the notes option, and the option to invite guests on to a live incredibly easily.

Now I’m always telling people that they must keep time to spend on both personal and professional development. We must learn not only to improve at our endeavours (life or job,) so that we are just plain better at what we do, but also so that we stay interested.

I had an epiphany when I did a development session with coach Alice Armstrong Scales a couple of years ago, and I realised that while I’d learned a lot about growing flowers for sale, and had become adept at both growing and selling them, I was actively bored. I needed to make the job more interesting (believe me, every single job you can do to be paid a living can become boring, no matter how creative.) And the way to keep anything interesting, is to keep learning. Artists take time to go to galleries, to travel, to take classes with colleagues they admire. Writers go on retreat with their peers and push themselves to write something different, they go to lectures where other writers talk about their inspiration, their practise, their experience.

Flower farmers? Well I had spent so much time teaching myself to become a flower farmer, to become a florist, and become a small business woman, that I hadn’t noticed when I’d basically achieved that objective. That day with Alice was the one when I realised it was time to shake things up. I needed to give up the wasted hours reading the newspaper and I needed to start learning, and to start challenging myself again.

And so the Club became - as a challenge to me, to build a community of searchers, people who are interested in how small businesses work, how to build a thoughtful life which pays the bills, people who are interested in creating rather than consuming, and want to learn more about this in an evolving cycle.

My dream is that the Club becomes big enough that I can slowly stop teaching so many workshops and demos, and instead fold those subjects into the Club activity. This way for a modest monthly, and extremely modest annual fee, people can join the club and learn. I’ve already taken the social media workshop I used to teach and folded it into the club. Last term we had a live chat session with marketeer Frou McGarry talking marketing, AI and social media for the Club. This term we had a great session answering Clubbers actual real time questions about how social media can work for them and their creative businesses. Next term we have Milla from PinkStormSocial coming to tell us how to use Instagram well. I have HEAPS of questions for her already, and I’m sure the Clubbers will too.

I need to learn, and so do you.

I may know a chunk of stuff, but the world evolves, the way we run businesses evolves, there’s always more to discover.

And so the Club sessions are either Q&A sessions on topics I do know a good deal about, or, if I need more input, I invite a guest to share their expertise. This term we’ve had Peat Free and Wild Gardening man Jack Wallington, coach Alice Armstrong Scales, and for our book club session we had the inimitable Arthur Parkinson whose mind seems to run at a million miles an hour while he always has his eye on the calm objective: keep chickens, grow flowers, write books. How and why does he do it? How does publishing work for him? Where did he learn to paint, or is he self-taught? What tips does he have for the club re all of the above? Catch up with that glorious chat here.

Next term we have one of my floristry students, Francesca Muston, whose day job is trend forecasting. She’s coming to tell the club what trend forecasting is, why it’s worth people running small businesses keeping an eye out for incoming trends, and how we can plan to adapt to change if we have an idea what’s coming up, not just in our own industry, but in the way people generally behave. I was an anthropology major and am always fascinated by working out how and why we behave with one another. I know this is going to be a session I learn a lot from.

And because reading is an activity many of the Clubbers enjoy (as I said, we’re a community of searchers, and searchers read (or listen to audio books,)) we have another author coming to speak to us. This time it’s wildlife campaigner, journalist and writer Kate Bradbury whose book One Garden Against the World was a brilliant exposition of how small actions we individually take make ripple effect good, spreading out from where we act. When we feel disenfranchised by big industry, big corp, big government, a book like Kate’s reassures us that we all have more influence to exert than we might think. A single act by one of us may inspire or enable a single act by another, and another, and another… She will tell us about her hedgehogs, and her gulls, her caterpillars, the small acts she makes to save trees planted but not watered by her municipality. She will inspire us all.

I love the Club because it gives me the opportunity to try new things. On the 21st November this year we had the first session where the Club went on tour! I broadcast about great Christmas gifts for people like our Club members from the Niwaki shop in Chiltern St, London W1. It might have been chaotic. It might have been noisy. But was also great fun, informative, interesting, and it has helped me learn about how I can take the Club on the road in future which will mean we can see more interesting places, speak to interesting people, expand our Club horizons.

So why join the Club here on Substack? For all the information, but mostly for the live chats. There you will find a real community of likeminded searchers, creatives, people looking for a way to make a living on their own, thoughtful terms.

Remember too, that Clubbers get 10% off all the workshops and demos we offer online and at the farm. If, for example, you wanted to come to one of our three day workshops held at the farm in 2026, your annual Club membership will cost less than the discount you’ll get from being a Club member.

And do tell your friends. It’s possible to try the club out for free for a short while and it’s also possible to gift people club membership for a month or a year. People joining the club now will only ever pay the fee they were charged when they joined, unless they stop their subscription and then decide to re-join. We will be putting the price up a little after Christmas (29th December). So join the club before then to get the best price going forward.

JOIN THE CLUB HERE