INTRODUCTION
So knowing where you are, where you’re going, and most important where you would like to go. Well, it’s all about the life of an apple tree.
BODY
So we’re literally coming up, or actually a little bit more than 10 years ago I wrote a blog post about the life trajectory of your business, and I did it as a metaphor for an apple tree. And now here we are a decade later and I’ve updated it and I put it in the show notes where you can find the links to it.
But really, it’s incredibly relevant for where we are today because there are those who did the work during Covid to and all things that have happened since then to revamp the way that they live their lives and have put themselves in a different place, given where the world is and how it has changed in its culture.
And then there are some that haven’t. And all the way through, it’s all about a fear of what could be where it was and the life trajectory of your business and what you’re doing. And so nothing is ever more relevant than the story of the apple tree. So I did this very, very early on in the podcast, and so I think it was episode four but I’m gonna do it again today because I think it is really relevant.
So, bear with me. I hope that you can enjoy this metaphor, this story allegory, whatever you wanna take with it with you and you can use it especially for where we are today, to appreciate where you might be and how you might respond to the circumstance you find yourself in.
So, an apple tree. An apple tree is, the trajectory of an apple tree, a few facts about an apple tree. One is young trees bear fruit about four years into their lifecycle, and they continue to bear fruit probably, you know, for most of our lifetimes, 40, 50, 60 years. And of course once they get up to full maturity, they produce far more apples than any one, you know, group or family could ever eat.
Right? It’s just you would be inundated and you could not possibly eat all the apples is a mature apple tree could produce. So that is a fun fact to know. So the lifecycle of an apple tree, Well, seed goes into the ground, and if you’re planting that apple tree, you have no earthly idea whether or not anything’s gonna come outta that ground. And yet you have blind faith in what it could be. So you water it, you tend it, you make sure that there’s, you know, the sign light is there and you hope that that seed grows like any other seed into becoming something that will ultimately, you know, pop out of the ground. Okay. That’s just like starting any business and doing what you can do in order to launch and hope that, it takes hold and the roots can start to grow.
And then of course the sapling comes out, but anything can take it, right? You know, whether it’s a wind or any animal or anything like that could take it away. Even someone you know with a mishap would take it away, right? So you do all that you can to be ever vigilant, as with you would with any newborn.
So you got your first client, you overdo it on the first client, you’re exhausted. You probably didn’t make any money. Right? And, you did what you had to do. And then of course the tree grows in the next, call it year or two, not bearing any fruits yet, but it’s strong, right? And it does what it needs to do, in terms of its growth. But you know, it could die. A good strong wind might take it and or a disease or anything like that. So you really are just as vigilant as you once were when you put the seed in the ground and you do all that you can do to make sure that it stays that way. But you are also, you know, starting to get more clients. Your third, fourth, fifth project and you know, one that could go incredibly wrong, you know, might really take your business out, but you know, getting worse, you know, or harder and harder for that to be. And then of course comes the time when the tree starts to bear fruit. And it’s a very strong and sturdy, and you’d have to work pretty hard to, to eliminate the tree, right?
So nothing, no wind is gonna blow it over. Nothing is gonna be, unless it’s a hurricane, right? But really truly, it’s, it’s a, it’s a strong enough tree to bear fruit. And so now you’re like, oh my God, it. Bears fruit and you, if you work really hard, you can eat all the fruit that comes your way.
And we’ve all been there, right? And Covid and everything else after that gave the illusion that that was the case, right? Is you kind of got flooded with fruit, right? You can eat as much as you can and you can kind of be super busy and be overwhelmed. Right? And that’s where you are. So I wanted to focus you there and make sure that you’re comfortable and understanding and saying, all right, where are you?
Perhaps that’s where you’re in your business, in which case you’re gonna take what comes, and it’s a lot and it’s fruitful, and it’s the bigger projects than you’ve ever gotten. And you try your very, very best to eat all the fruit, right? And you’re exhausted in the effort of eating all the fruit, but you can, right?
So you do. You do the work of eating all the fruit. Then more time goes by now, you’d have to work really hard to kill the tree, right? So you’re even more important. You’d have to really, it’s impossible now, physically impossible for you to eat all the apples. So then therefore, a beautiful shiny apple. Is gonna hit the ground.
There’s nothing you can do about it. It is going to hit the ground and as it hits the ground, you have a choice. You can try to eat that beautiful shiny apple or distribute that beautiful shiny apple and do what you can with it. Or you can just keep on waiting and try to pick the most beautiful ones from the tree.
The difference is the one on the ground’s already dead. The one in the tree is still alive ’cause it’s still attached to the tree. Now remember, you have the specific history of having to do everything you can to keep the business alive and make sure that the tree can grow to the size that it is, and you haven’t left the place of that it could die.
And then when you get the whiff of a memory, perhaps your business has slowed down. The economy is a little tougher. Things are a little, little harder for you. So, oh my God, the tree could die except it can’t. Except it won’t. Right? Unless you provide extraordinary effort to in fact kill the tree.
And what, how would you kill the tree? You wouldn’t prune it. You wouldn’t water it, you wouldn’t take care of it. You would go to extraordinary lengths to be the same as you otherwise were, which would very much choke the tree. And so because you are living literally in the past when the tree needed you to keep it alive, but you no longer do that work, right? So nor need to do that work, but yet you still do and you’re distracted from what is the ultimate goal? What is the ultimate goal?
And the whole point of the apple tree story is that your business will get to the place where you do what you have to do in order to make sure that there’s nothing horrific will happen to the tree, but you live in the idea that it is secure in its existence, and then your focus is always to look up.
Always to look up to what is the shiniest apple, and to pay attention to the shiniest apple that you can pick fresh from the tree, and you will allow those beautiful apples that are necessarily on the ground to exist and perhaps rot, right? Because you don’t need them. What you need is to focus on the shiniest apple, and you need to pay attention as to what it is that you offer by way of value for those that you seek to serve.
And why am I telling this story today? Why is it out there? Because here’s a global statement for all of you. None of you are in the same business as when you started, if you happen to have started more than seven years ago, none of you. You don’t have a business that looks anything like what it is. The trajectory, the value points, the way we live our lives, if it’s more than seven years old, right? Is absolutely positively nothing like when you started.
The opportunity that exists in front of you is dwarfs whatever came from behind that includes covid and coming outta covid. That includes anything you have ever done. Why? Because value is in the process of being defined. Pick whatever point you want to talk about that, whether that’s the perception of care, whether that’s the level of intimacy that can be created at scale, whether that’s just simply the, what people will pay for by way of creative business, right?
That opportunity and the opportunity to really leverage communication and tools and the ability to be related more than ever is really the opportunity there. And the only way that that can exist is if you acknowledge one, your tree will not die, right? It will die if you live in the past. Right? And two, the only way to not live in the past is to look up and go find the shiniest apple and live to what that truth might be.
Now, the practicality of that is really pretty profound, right? I feel very, very sad for those who really believed that the fire hose, that was 21, 22 in the very beginning, maybe even of 23, right? What it would always be, who, who did not do the work of defining what value work looks like? Who lived with the power of leverage. ’cause the power of leverage is a beautiful, beautiful thing, right? And now are, are suffering the consequences of de-leveraging.
And so here’s the power of leverage so that one can understand, you can think about it in the terms of borrowing money, buying a house for, you know, only putting up, you know, 10% of your money and when the house goes up, you make all that profit.
I get it right? But leverage is also about business model. And how many of you out there are connected with the price of an event, right? Whether that event is an interior design, a photograph, a wedding, anything like that, right? But literally, the more somebody spends, the more money you make. Well, that’s leverage and the ability for you to extract value from that when people feel wealthy and spend a lot of money, well, that’s leverage, right? So if someone says, Hey, I’ll spend a hundred, but I feel really good about myself, so I’ll spend 150 and you get 10%, you just got another five. Awesome. That’s leverage, right? That’s leverage and the beauty of going up, right?
But what it is, is like you didn’t pay attention to the idea that it could come down. So you didn’t say, hey, maybe it’s time for me exactly to leave that booster rocket and go instead, I’m not gonna go to that leverage. I’m gonna de-leverage in the time that I can. And so that’s about maybe a monthly fee and not being tied to the price of something becoming agnostic to price.
Right? Or if I’m working by the hour and people don’t care about my hourly fees and they pay them no matter what, then. Hey, things are really great, but then things slow down and people are like, so how come you spent the hour the way you spent it? Because all along you have been justifying your hours and writing down descriptions, and now those descriptions get challenged on a very profound way, leverage and de-leverage.
Well, what is that a function of? Your tree was always rock solid, but you weren’t looking up. You were looking down because all these beautiful apples were raining down and you kept on trying to eat them. That was a mistake right? Now, fixing that mistake today requires that you say to yourself, I’ve got other opportunities, other opportunities in front of me, opportunities for me to slice off the top of what it is that I’m doing.
You know, the value of of the creative mind has never been at more of a premium, and yet we don’t leverage it. Right. You don’t talk about what you could do in order to provide that value to somebody at a profound level, if that’s what you need in order to get yourself through, and perhaps that would be a great business for you or perhaps not, but it is the way to deliver, right?
And how do you delver in a time when people are punishing you. So to be very specific about it, if someone said, Hey, I’m gonna have an extraordinary wedding, let’s call it as 500,000, and I booked it in 2022, and I’m about to have it come out in the fall, and all of a sudden I’m feeling not so great about things, so I’m gonna go, instead of that 500,000, I’m gonna spend 300,000.
Are you gonna say no to that wedding? You’re gonna walk away. You’re not gonna take that money. Of course you are. You’re in the process of de-levering though. And so you’re gonna have to work incredibly hard. ’cause for you, you’re gonna work the same amount of hours and time and energy to produce. And most creative businesses are exactly like this to do a 300,000 wedding as you would a 500, right?
It’s only a marginal reduction on your effort. So therefore, you are literally writing a check relative to what you were gonna get in order to get the very and very much the the lesser percentage that you would have. And there’s probably nothing you can do about it. And so here you go. You’re in the process of de-levering.
Well, what do you learn? How do you learn? Right? You’re literally suffering the pain of what that looks like, and if you’re focused on selling product, might I tell you, culture has told you that people don’t care about product. Why? Because if I can use my cell phone and Google services and pictures to figure out exactly what, what would be an alternative for the very thing you’re offering from me in less than 10 seconds, which is what you can do, right? Then, the value of the thing unrelated to why that thing matters to somebody is going to be a very hard sell. AI is not gonna make your life easier, by the way. Right? So here you are. You’re in the process of de-levering, because if all you were about was selling the pretty thing, if all you were doing was focusing on the real thing, but you weren’t invested in doing what you really do, which is design, which is contemplating that we don’t just choose pretty things, we choose relational things that create transformative change.
Well then you’re in a really kind of a tough spot, right? Because you were looking down, you’re focusing on the apples that were raining down from you. You’re focusing on the idea now that the tree might die. So here’s where you are today. The tree’s not gonna die. It’s only gonna die if you live in the past, right?
So look up, figure out what is, what’s in front of you. Look, then go through the pain of de-levering if you haven’t done it yet, because you’re just gonna have to work your way through it. But in the meantime, please don’t slice off the bottom. Please don’t give into the just. Right. A client that says, well, I just need you to, I did this and I just need you to, that’s the justs, right?
Mm-hmm. Nope. No, thank you. Right. Justs are , another word for just is fear, right? I just need you to do this because I’m too terrified to give you the opportunity for what I might need. That’s where we are today. So guess what? Don’t give into the, just instead offer opportunity for you to provide value above and beyond the just at all times.
Whether that’s to do the complete, you know, design of something, provide consulting advice, do those things that are slicing off the top and not the bottom. If you do that then you’ll be looking up, right? That’s why the apple tree is so important for you today to take advantage of what is right in front of you, which is the living, breathing fruit that is delicious and lives on the tree, and is just waiting for you to pick it right, and to allow the rest of them who may not be as strong to fall away and go on the floor and will be available to those that might want to eat a dead apple, right?
So pick the live ones, choose what could be, and ultimately absorb the pain If you haven’t done the work yet, no better time than today. And I apologize to all of those of you who are in pain. I am not flip about it. But it is nothing that we have not talked about here. Nothing that you did not know was coming.
And now you’re living in the idea that, hey, leverage is a beautiful thing going up, but on the way coming down, oh my God, does it hurt? So that is something for you to pay attention to and something for you to know about, and it is definitely, I hope, an opportunity for you to see what could be.
So that’s my riff for today until next time.
