The Soil.
The Business Garden Series – Part 1The Foundation, the Place, the Body, the Energy
In a world where AI is accelerating everything, encouraging you to speed through your workflows even faster and to optimise absolutely everything, I fear that one of the most crucial pieces of sustainable and eventually restorative entrepreneurial work is falling off the cliff.
The foundation.
The very soil you plant your ideas in.
That which comes before you even begin.
And this is not a stage that is reserved for those thinking about starting a business, it is a stage that we return to over and over again, year after year. As solo founders, as team leads, as decision makers in larger organisations. Because life is cyclical, and so is business. It’s just that the common models don’t honour this aspect of the work, and prefer to keep quiet about it, pretending that instead of spirals, it’s all a curve that races upwards and upwards.
But in a business garden we don’t really care about common models. We care about a model that actually honours you, your vision, your life, and the nature of life overall.
So here we are. In your business garden.
Beneath your feet is soil. Land. Gravity. Your heels sink into the ground, planted where you intend to sow something new and beautiful.
The temptation tingles in your fingertips to just grab those seeds, those ideas, and throw them at whatever you stand on, hoping they will root and grow fast, and turn into something fabulous.
But you know better.
You know that before you begin to sow, the most fruitful thing you can do is to take stock of where you’re standing and to nourish the very ground you’re intending to plant your new work into.
And thus, you begin.
You dig your hands into the soil beneath your feet and assess its quality. You celebrate the worms that signify a healthy ecosystem. You acknowledge the dry patches, the wet zones, the places where weeds sprout first. You sense into into your life, your schedule, your baseline, and you take stock.
Like that time in late spring, when I decided the dahlia bulbs were ready to be planted. I had a bare patch in the garden, mulled over and boring, hardly any weeds had taken root there and I preemptively deemed the patch lifeless, boring, dull.
But when I began to turn over some soil right at the edge where patch meets lawn, my shovel suddenly touched something soft, and two sleepy eyes were blinking back at me from the dark ground. I jumped back, heart racing, momentarily petrified, and instantly worried I had hurt whatever I had just awoken from a deep sleep.
The toad was big, and looked, unsurprisingly, rather grumpy. I carefully took a closer look, checking if I had hurt it in any way. Luckily I had only just touched the creature, and she (or he?) appeared just fine, glaring at me and patiently waiting until I backed off, only to bury herself in the soil once more.
Later that day I read about the immense value of a toad in your garden, and how it signifies a healthy, balanced ecosystem – right there, in the patch I had doubted before. Now, the dahlias are growing strongly, and I keep an eye out for my friend, the toad, whenever I dig anywhere out there.
As you dig your hands down in the soil of your business garden, I wonder what answers you’ll find to the questions that are hidden underground:
Where in the foundation of your life do things go well?
What goodness do you have to lean on and to celebrate?
What and who supports you every day?
Maybe that foundation is your own body and your own rhythm. Maybe it's the culture and the safety you've built underneath a team.
Maybe you find patches in your garden that need watering, and others require better drainage. Maybe some places require compost for the soil to come to life again, maybe you need to change up your choice of fertiliser.
Where do you need more support?
What would help you to build a strong foundation to grow in, so that you feel safe and held and nourished?
Like more exercise to strengthen your body, time spent just breathing each day to soften your core, a chair your back actually finds comfortable, someone to talk through your vision with you to dig out clarity.
And as you tend to the soil and build up your foundation, you create the bedrock for your business garden to grow. Maybe for you the most important aspect is the place you work in, like for me, who needs a space that is beautiful and tidy and quiet in order to thrive. Maybe you desire to focus on your body – the very core of your work, no matter what you do. Maybe you focus on building your capacity and energy, creating the inner space you need to move forward to the stage of sowing your ideas in your business garden.
My personal foundation is the very home I am building, surrounded by the wildness of southern Småland.
The old house and its creaking floorboards that have carried feet for over 200 years, and that now carry mine.
The wild and lush garden, with oodles of rhubarb, peonies dotted around all flowerbeds, and the old apple tree that bends under the weight of its many fruits.
It’s my husband’s presence and support. My cats that can’t get enough of cuddles, and that join me on my lap as I write.
It’s the amazing people I keep on meeting in this rural area, taking away any doubt that to find creative peers you need to live in a big city. All that shapes the bedrock for what I am here to create.
So tend to the soil. Tend to the baseline that all else builds on. And it starts with the wellbeing of you, and what it takes for you to feel grounded and nourished, ready for the spring of your business to come around and to start planting the seeds, the ideas, that you have in your pocket.
What aspect of your foundation will you tend to today?
Taking care of the foundation is what I have been calling The Groundwork in my branding process with clients for years – it is a crucial step on the way towards a regenerative brand that serves you, your customers, and life itself, and it is often rushed through or even skipped completely in traditional, solely commerce-oriented branding approaches. But tending to the soil of your business garden is what actually creates the foundation for a business that values long-term meaning-making over shot term trends, allowing you to build on clarity that is true to you an the ecosystem your work exits within, rather than just following rules and the status quo of old paradigm business (the one you are here to disrupt and change).
Join me for a free, no-strings-attached 30 minute call to explore what your foundation looks like right now, and what you can do to strengthen the soil of your business garden.