Business is a Garden: Plant the Seeds
It is unprecedented that so many business owners are finding themselves shuttering or limiting access to their consumers. It feels at odds with everything we believe about ourselves as entrepreneurs and employees. Even those people who currently feel flush with work realize that the longer this goes on, the less likely it will be that clients continue to have resources to pay the invoices sent to them. So, now more than ever is the time to tend the barren ground and sow the dirt for better days.
You might guess that gardening reminds me a lot of business planning and marketing strategies, hence the name of my business, Flourish with Kate (LLC as required by my attorney!) If the crisis of COVID-19 has you thinking that the ground is bare and bereft of life, I urge you to think again and start planting the seeds for the harvest to come. Do it with hope and faith, focused on sustainable strategies, and you’ll find a way to flourish when the time comes.
Gardeners don’t give up in the late Fall and early Winter when the ground goes hard and the light weakens. We re-imagine the earth around us, read about plants that might replace the ones that didn’t grow this year. Perhaps we’d like to add some colour in areas that have become saturated with one tone or another. Almost always, there is a new pest that has found the garden and the best course of action is to plant things that deter it quietly.
For example, is there a competitor in your garden that you view as a pest? Start doing some research now, while you have the time, and think ahead rather than through the clouded lens of fear and anger. Create a new place for yourself or bring in a new product or service that is unique to your way of doing business.
Are you trying to find a way to collaborate with a complimentary business? Now is the time to find out who their ideal client or customer is, determine where you overlap, and plan something that grows into your respective strengths. In this way you nourish one another, creating a supportive system in which both give a bit to get a little more. Gardening is a lot like that; we find mutually beneficial plants that enjoy being together and provide a little of what the other needs. Your business should do this, too.
Are you lost for ideas and not sure where to start? Get out the seed catalogue, Friend, because it’s time to have some fun! As a business owner, we all get stuck in a rut and gardeners do, too. When I can’t figure out what needs to happen in my garden next, I pick up a seed catalogue and build a vision board of the things that interest or delight me. Do you have a business vision board? A pad of paper with words, line drawings, and ideas listed is a perfect start to your vision board; this can be as free flowing and whimsical as you prefer because the idea is to exclude nothing while you stream ideas and strategies that make you hopeful and exuberant. Later, you’ll drill down and beta test your insights, getting to the technical data stuff of it all, but you will do it with joy and happiness knowing that the ideas are unique to your business and the new perspective will help you fulfill a strategy that suits you best.
Soil can get stale, and so can your marketing. In a garden, you might use this time to till the soil and add a little nourishment to it. Likewise, use this time to upend your marketing plan and infuse it with life. No matter how innovative or clever your strategy, people will become blind to it after a while. Remember, the average person is consuming over 9,000 marketing messages every day so the fertile ground your campaign laid this month is already being leached of the very thing it needs. Treat your marketing as the fertile ground that builds happy consumers and start tilling that soil!
Last but not least, remember that all things need to rest. It is okay to take a break from toiling in the weeds to reflect on things and embrace the necessary changes. I find that it helps my perspective in the garden to refill the birdfeeders and check on their nests and birdhouses, as if to say thank you for being here and invite them to stay. What are you doing in your business to invite people to return and stay? We think we convey that message, but we do not always make time to deliver it meaningfully. These lean times are the perfect opportunity to pen that heartfelt thanks or set up your one to one chat via teleconference. Remember, sometimes it’s not today’s transaction that begets our success, it is planting seeds that will bloom for us later.
This post was contributed by Kate Sprague of Flourish with Kate LLC. It originally appeared here. Visit her site to learn more about how your business can flourish with the help of her Funky Little Ad Agency.
