Entrepreneurship Is Gardening

Why does gardening teach you the right mindset for business?

Gardening is not just planting vegetables and waiting for them to grow. On the contrary, it is a job that involves various tasks that each have their own importance.

Choosing a planting location: doing your market research

For a plant to flourish, it must have sunlight, favorable soil and adequate wind exposure (some trees should not be planted in a wind corridor, for example). Before deciding to plant, it is important to choose a location that meets the necessary conditions. The same is true for entrepreneurship, before starting a business, one must first study its own qualities and choose the market that would be the most favorable for it to prosper by offering a comparative advantage.

Prepare the ground: Make sure you have a good enough product or service

Before planting fruit trees or simply seeds, it is necessary to have the most favorable enriched and worked soil. Without this, you may have the best seeds in the world, but they will not grow. This means that even if you have a great idea, if your product does not meet a need well enough, it will not be successful.

Watering and weeding

Next, for the tree or vegetable to grow, you need to water it regularly and remove weeds. This means working regularly and knowing how to eliminate activities that do not correspond to your core business or those that distract you from the essential. It can also mean breaking off unsatisfactory partnerships with collaborators or clients.

Trust the process

You can’t “grow” the plant. There is a part that escapes you. You can control everything that is conducive to its flourishing. The same is true for your business: you can control everything that contributes to its success, but you can’t be sure. You must have confidence in the process. If you’ve done the previous steps well, you’ve basically given yourself the best chance.

Persevere and then pivot if necessary

If, despite your best efforts, the plant has died, you will need to replant another, slightly different plant so that it does not suffer the same fate. The same goes for an idea that has not found its market, you will have to test several of them sometimes before one really breaks through and meets the success it deserves.