Three Lessons This Founder Learned From Gardening That Apply to Life and Business
Sarah Judd Welch, Co-founder & CEO of Sharehold
Sarah Judd Welch is a community and organization designer and the CEO of innovation agency Sharehold. She lives in Brooklyn, NY, and loves to garden on her deck with her cat, Anna Banana. Three years ago Sarah began gardening as a creative and therapeutic outlet. Below Sarah shares what gardening means to her and three lessons she’s learned through gardening, that apply to life and business.
I started gardening in the spring of 2017. I was definitely feeling a bit stuck in my work at the time. As one of my mentors framed it, I had outgrown the sandbox that I had built for myself (with my company prior to Sharehold) and I needed to build a new, bigger one.
I began to reevaluate the priorities in my life and peel my personal identity away from my work identity. It’s pretty common for first-time business owners to associate their worth and identity with their business and I was no exception. I was so sucked into it and knew I needed that relationship to shift.
I aimed to find a project that let me feel productive without the pressure of or association with work. My partner at the time had just moved into an apartment in Park Slope with a ginormous patio and I knew that the patio had to become a garden.
My grandmother had a rose garden and my mom grew vegetables. I always loved the gardens but never thought too deeply about them and after 16 years in New York City, it never occurred to me that I’d have one of my own. But suddenly, there was this patio that was begging me to make it into a garden, so I did. Since then, I’ve built my current garden at my new apartment and tend to it daily.
Gardening reminded me how much I love to build new things and it renewed my passion for my work, specifically the company-building side of my work. There are so many business and life lessons to take from gardening. For example:
Lesson one: Fast growth is often unsustainable.
The tall, leggy seedlings that sprout first and grow tallest are usually the first ones to die. It looks and feels exciting but the experienced gardener knows that the fast-growing sprouts will not make it, they’re not sustainable. Obviously, we know this is true of unicorn businesses, too.
Lesson two: Pluck the suckers and focus on fewer, stronger branches.
Tomatoes grow “suckers” in the joints between the stem and branches--they’re little mini branches that will eventually sprout flowers and maybe even tomatoes, but they take nutrients away from the rest of the plant and if you don’t pluck the suckers, you’ll end up with a plant with many thin branches and smaller tomatoes. Last June I was away for 10 days and my tomato plants grew about 2 feet, including many suckers that were too hard to prune by that point. When it started producing fruit, the plant toppled over under the weight of tomatoes; the branches weren’t strong enough.
Many small branches all demand nutrients from the soil and environment but the resources are finite. You’ll have a healthier, stronger plant and a more fruitful harvest if you pluck the suckers and focus on cultivating fewer, stronger branches. This is like anything in life or business that takes time/money/energy. It’s tempting and ego-boosting to have 10 revenue lines but you should probably just have 3-4 really strong revenue lines.
Tomatoes and peppers from one of Sarah’s harvests
Lesson three: Seeds that you don’t plant don’t grow.
The same is true for everything else in life!
Continue on, read Sarah’s tips for a newbie gardener starting out —>