Abundant Full Harvest

I'm going to talk about our vegetable garden for a few minutes, but hang in there with me. I will relate it to building your business, I promise.

In the fall we clear out all the dead old plants and till everything under. Then we pile on the tons of leaves from all our trees and till again. Then in the spring we till again. (Don't you like how I keep saying "we"? I have never used a rototiller in my life. OK, so it is Dennis who is doing all this work!)

After the garden is tilled Dennis makes rows and lays out the drip system. We let it drip for awhile and see where we need to make repairs. There are always lots of repairs. Next we plan where we want which plants. Then we finally get to kneel down or just bend over and plant the seeds and plants from the nursery.

I would like to say we are totally organic gardners, but at this point it is pointless for us to even try. So now I go up and down each row shaking on powdered Seven. If I don't every little sprouted seed gets eaten to the ground.

The summer is filled with watering, weeding, squishing bugs, fertilizing, caging the tomatoes, cutting off succors, and looking for more bugs and weeds. We had a hail storm this year and thought we were finished, but most of the plants somehow recovered from that.

However, over the course of the summer some plants died. Some got eaten by bugs, no matter what we did. Some got diseases and had to be pulled. Some made beautiful vines but NO fruit. Some were late bloomers. Some have mostly male blossoms.

After hearing all of that you'd think we were back to buying our veggies from the store. Nope! Our time has come. We are experiencing an abundant, full harvest. Almost too abundant. Do you know any good recipes for zuccini? We are enjoying green beans, squash, tomatoes, onions, cucumbers, swiss chard, and herbs. We have had lots of lettuce and peas but their season is over. The cilantro and second year swiss chard have already gone to seed and have ensured new volunteer plants for next year.

In short, every day we are enjoying the fruit of our labors.

Surely the parallels with building a networking business are obvious. It takes time to prepare the soil for your business. You are your soil, by the way. There are people skills and presentation skills to learn. There are the basic facts about your business to learn. There are attitude adjustments that must be made.

Then as you get your organization started you lose some to the weeds and bugs and hail storms. But if you will continue to provide nourishment to your group, and continue to add new people, and continue to "fertilize" your mind with appropriate books and CDs, you will experience an abundant, full harvest.

It's a law of nature.