Much to the amusement of my friends, and resulting in me being the butt of many emasculating jokes, I love gardening and landscaping. It’s an outlet that gives my ADD personality the instant gratification it sometimes needs; and it gives me an excuse to enjoy the weather while I listen to an audiobook. I love it.
I think I inherited my green thumb from my mom. She has an amazing garden and spends most of her weekend free time working in the dirt. Anyway, every Sunday I try to spend at least two hours in the yard: Cutting the grass, planting, and weeding (the only activity I loathe about gardening).
While weeding is time consuming, and it can be quite frustrating, and there is no instant gratification that comes from it, it is by far the most important routine job to be done in a garden. In light of that, my goal every week when I work in my yard is to fill at least one garbage bag full of weeds. The damn things grow like, well, weeds… and to stay on top of them it requires consistency.
Aside from their unsightliness, the reason it’s so important to pull weeds from your yard is because they literally suck the life out of your plants, flowers and in some cases, trees. If you let them, they’ll even consume your grass. They are growth killers…
Entrepreneurial Weeds
In business, as with gardening, there are always weeds growing around us, threatening to suck the life out of our company and kill growth. And they come in the form of people, temptations, and economic challenges. But, like maintaining a garden, they can be quashed if you’re aware and committed to pulling them away from your company regularly.
Although entrepreneurial weeds are not as obvious as those found in a garden, they grow every day and will consume your business, inevitably bringing it down, if you let them.
You have to make a conscious effort to reflect on the things in your career that are holding you back, consuming your time in a negative way, causing you to worry about things outside of your control, and hindering your focus. These are entrepreneurial weeds, and you need to get rid of them.
Examples:
People who are constantly pulling you away from what’s important to your business: weed
Employees who bring a negative attitude to work: weed
Friends who complain that you spend too much time working: weed
The urge to hit the bar for happy hour on Tuesday: weed
Checking your facebook page throughout the work day: weed
You get the point.
How Entrepreneurs Kill Weeds
Take 20 minutes at the end of every work week to examine the weeds in your business life. Reflect on what took you away from growing your business last week, and start pulling these things out of your life. If you don’t, just as with gardens, the entrepreneurial weeds will eventually engulf much of the growth potential and positivity in your business.
Accept the fact that you’ll always have to remove the weeds from killing your business. They are a constant threat. Throw some out, and new ones come. This is the battle of entrepreneurship. Pulling the weeds allows what’s important in your business to thrive, and grow beyond expectations.
Now if you’ll excuse me, it’s Sunday and I some weeds to pull.
Stay hungry,
Aaron
