Don't Be Afraid To Experiment And Have Fun With Your Offerings!
Ready for another garden/business metaphor?!
Thought so 🙃
Maybe your garden is super lush and still going strong - way to go!
Ours… it’s looking mighty rough as it hasn't been a priority in the last few weeks and…we’re kind of over it.
Sean mentioned mowing it all down soon and because I saw a sea of red from the tomatoes I had to go out at least 1 or 2 more times.
So, last night Ellie and I were out there picking what felt like 6,232 cherry tomatoes and 463 carrots and as I’m looking around a little metaphor came to me.
I looked at the top half of raised bed to the right where we thought we were going to have the biggest crop of cucumbers possible, but yet we didn’t get a single one.
I looked at the bottom half of the raised bed where we thought at least 3/4 of our 35 strawberries would come back, but yet we got six with maybe two strawberries.
I looked at the other bed where I randomly planted 1 basil plant and that thing produced enough to feed pesto to the neighborhood and then tried to stop but we revived it.
I look at the space where our peas were planted and those have been nowhere to be found.
Our two plants of lettuce went insane, but I’m the only one that would eat it so more of it went to waste than not.
Our 2 sweet potatoes took over half of the garden bed and produced two massive bunches of 8 each.
Green beans came on strong, but nobody was interested in eating them so we gave those away, and then they were looking all kinds of rough last night so I pulled them.
We weren’t sure about the carrots because we didn’t thin them out, but they eventually showed up and showed off!
And then you come over to the trusty tomatoes. This is the third year having tomatoes and the third year that these bad boys have produced more than I could eat in a year.
They got so heavy that they fell over so I tied them back up, they fell over again, they’ve gone without water for probably a week, and still, they produced an insane amount.
So, back to last night, where Ellie and I were picking and I filled up two buckets of carrots and tomatoes. I texted a friend to ask if she wanted them for their business, and she said absolutely!
I looked at our dried-up green beans and pulled those bad boys out to get them out of the way of the ever-growing tomatoes.
Okay - enough about our garden…how does this relate to business?
I am so glad you asked!
We go into the garden season as an experiment. It’s about the experience of doing it together as a family and learning about things we wouldn’t have otherwise.
We use it to play around and my brain gets some white space to just think (hello blog and social media content) and it’s also taught us some lessons.
While obviously, we need to create a business that solves a problem and generates an income, but as we grow we need to remember a few things…
You may offer something you think is going to be a hit and it doesn’t (cucumbers & strawberries)
Some offerings will be pretty quick to produce and then be done (sweet potatoes)
Maybe some offerings take quite a bit longer to get going, but then produce a heck of a lot (carrots)
Some things may produce quickly, but you just don’t really enjoy them (green beans)
Some you throw in just for fun and holy shit they go wild! (basil)
Then you’ve got the tried and true offerings that you enjoy and are consistent no matter what (tomatoes)
Try new things out, find out what you truly enjoy, get rid of what you don’t enjoy, and keep giving life to the thing that fits and consistently brings people to you.
Okay - that’s my metaphor friend. It sounded good while in the garden so hopefully, it resonated with you today :)