Jani Martinius

Building a business is like gardening

Building a business is exactly like gardening. I know it sounds strange, so bear with me!

Gardening in the Pacific Northwest looks like this:

Think about what you’d like to grow and where. Prepare the veggie beds. We plant tiny little vegetable seeds, and we water them daily. Not too much though, otherwise they drown and die.

Once sprouted we tend to the delicate plants. They need to be nurtured, loved and protected. They are pretty tough already, but a slug can be their demise.

As they grow ever so slowly, you weed the garden beds, go slug hunting at night with a flash light. Water and feed them. You put in so much work and get nothing in return (besides the delight that hopefully, they really are growing). No fruitful harvest yet.

This stage feels like it goes on for most of the growing season. Until one day the plants are big enough to shade out the weeds. They can handle a slug nibbling at their leaves. The time spent nurturing the plants is reduced. And then! It’s time to harvest the fruits of your & and your plants joint labor.

How does this relate to business again?

A business in it’s beginning stages creates a lot of work. Once you’ve figured out what kind of business you would like to run, there is much planning and doing. So many random tasks that feel like they are getting you nowhere.

You chip away at the work in all different areas that you know (and hope) will get your business thriving one day. Nothing quite happens yet, and you might feel like nothing you do makes any difference at all.

Until one day! Your business is big and strong enough to yield a healthy and vigorous harvest! Customers and sales start streaming in, and you can’t quite believe that the tiny seedling that you nurtured into a sturdy plant is now nurturing and supporting you.

Keep doing what you’re doing. Gardening, just like building a business is a marathon, not a sprint.