Pioneering ecological design in the tropics with Scott Gallant of Porvenir Design: 121

In the last few episodes I’ve spoken to a number of designers and business advisors who’ve specialized in regenerative business planning and ecological work, and today’s guest many of you may remember from the very early days of this podcast. In this episode I had the pleasure of talking with my friend Scott Gallant. It's been almost three years since we spoke on this podcast and he was one of the first 20 interviews that I did back in season one. When we spoke last he was just starting out with his design firm “Porvenir Design.” now almost three years in, he's amassed a lot of experience and knowledge, especially around tropical ecosystems and the challenges of the business side of permaculture design. In this episode we talked a lot about his transition from working at Rancho Mastatal to working on his own design and consultancy firm, some of the challenges that he's had in finding clients, working through designs, and navigating the intricacies of tropical ecosystems. We also go into detail about doing “due diligence” before implementing projects and we go into detail about some of the nuances and key things to understand about tropical ecosystems and how they differ from others. Though rainy areas like those in Costa Rica, where Scott is based, are generally considered non-brittle ecosystems, there are still a lot of things to understand and observe before making intelligent and informed designs for holistic systems. Towards the end Scott also gives advice for people who are looking to start out with their own design and consultancy firm, what they should look out for, and some of the unexpected challenges that they might want to consider. Now before we get started with this episode I had something really weird happened during the recording. Scott’s side recorded just fine without any problems with the audio, but for some reason my side recorded my voice extremely deep and I have no idea how to fix this. Luckily it didn't slow down or speed up the audio in any way, it just makes me sound like Barry White or a much manlier version of myself, so bear with me and know that it is me speaking even though it sounds nothing like me. Resources: Porvenir Design’s website Join the Porvenir PDC