If you don’t know this about me by now, there are three things I’m super passionate about in life beyond my family: entrepreneurship, gardening and travel. And guess what? I got to talk about two of them with May Tsupros! She shares how she started her school garden nonprofit.

She’s one of the co-founders of Gardeeneers.org. It’s a non-profit based in Chicago that manages a school garden program for over 1,000 students in 20 low-income schools soon to be 25 schools to improve educational outcomes and childhood nutrition. Amazing mission, right?

Some lessons that jump out from our conversation include:

How May found a co-founder and why she believes finding a partner is crucial when you are building an organization.
Why corporate sponsors ended up being their most important source of funding.
The 3 key similarities between managing gardens and managing business: seasons, tending and cultivation.

And if you didn’t listen to the previous show with Todd Henry in episode 093, he also used a gardening analogy to describe the process of designing your life and work.

Life Skills That Matter In This Episode

Building community.
Self-awareness.
Research and planning.

How May Works and Thinks

Wake up time: 4:30 – 5:00am
Core work activities + habits: 1) Get emails done first thing in the morning. 2) Two-hour weekly meeting with “hive” managers. 3) Two-hour weekly meeting with garden educators.
Regains focus by: Going onsite to see one of the garden programs in action.
Favorite productivity tool: Her Moleskine journal.