Growth.
The Business Garden Series – Part 3Care, observation, tending
You have worked your soil and sown your seeds in your business garden. Every day, you step out onto the ground, watering can in hand.
The excitement for the garden you’re growing has morphed into a sensation that lives somewhere between devotion and determination. You oscillate between a soft sense of caring and the out-dated lesson that society has taught you over and over: that you need to push through, work hard, and by willpower alone, if only you can fathom enough of it, you can make this work.
The days go by, and nothing happens.
You water, you watch the weather forecast, you question your choices – did you pick the right seeds?
Did you start with too many? Too few? What if another place would have been better for them? What if you are simply a terrible gardener and nothing will ever grow…?
But then, one morning as you step out with your watering can, you see it: the first growth. Tiny leaves of hope peak through the soil, and your heart begins a happy dance.
You sit beside the seedling, and you marvel at the magic that is unfolding in front of your eyes. From seed and soil this new life is emerging, helped by your hands and mind and heart.
Your business is entering a new chapter.
From stillness and anticipation you move into momentum.
The work you do shifts.
From preparation to facilitation. Maintaining, sustaining, caring. You take stock of your learnings. You see where your seeds have begun to grow, and where they lie dormant. You begin to understand which environment they need to start new life, and what your role is within that cycle.
And maybe you notice something that feels painful to the part of you that believes what the Western education systems have taught you: that if only you work hard enough and bulldoze your way through the obstacles, your business will grow. Some of the seeds you tried hardest to bring to life never sprouted. Some of the ones you planted on a whim, experimenting for the sake of joy, are suddenly growing strongly in places you didn’t think they could.
You realise, once more, that there is no straightforward path to growing a business garden.
Your soil, your foundation, is unique. Your seeds, your ideas, are, too. You are working with ingredients that are beautifully untested in this combination. You are bringing them together at a specific time, in a certain climate, within conditions that, in this way, have never existed before.
The part of you that wants to plan and predict, that seeks metrics and measurements, cringes at the idea that maybe all there is is circumstance, and chance, or, what I’d rather call serendipity.
We have learned that we should control the world around us. That safety and success are found when we grip on tightly and steer life into the direction we want it to move. That reaching a goal only counts when we have measurable evidence.
You know what you could have done to follow that path. You could have turned your garden into a monoculture. Following clear-cut rules. Applying artificial fertilisers. You could have bought dozens of tools, used dozens of techniques to optimise, to speed up growth, to enforce success.
But you don’t want a monoculture. You want diversity.
You want to restore, not extract. Be part of something that has meaning 100 years from now, and not just in the next tax return.
You want a business garden that is led by nature’s decisions as much as your own. You don’t rule over it, like a ruthless manager, only caring about how many millimetres your kale plants have achieved to grow since yesterday.
You steward it. You sense.
Watch. Feel. Listen.
You adapt your watering schedule based on the actual weather, not predictions that turned out to be false. You rest on a rainy day, trusting that when the sun comes back your energy will, too, and you will be out there again, tending and caring and stewarding what nature has entrusted you with.
You are part of the ecosystem you’re creating.
What will you do today in your business garden, if you fully own the fact that you and your business are part of nature?
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What actions, or in-actions, will be the most aligned to promote the wellbeing of you, and the new growth, as well as the soil beneath your work?
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How do you feel when you situate yourself in the sweet spot between going with the flow and stewarding your business garden with the long-term future of our planet in mind?
There is no linear timeline in growing a business garden. While your seeds are turning into plants, you see setbacks and surprises, you decide to sow some ideas again, and let others be taken over by the wildness, surrendering them back to the cycle of life in an endless, beautiful dance.
Join me for a free 30 minute call to explore where your business garden is at right now and how you can grow the brand you dream of as the steward of your vision.