Monday, April 19, 2010

Nature's Impressive Marketers

It's the first legitimately warm week in Seattle this year and the flush of warmer air has me all excited. It also has me thinking dotingly on the flowers and herb garden that Mike and I have started on our patio. Me, a gardener? Hardly! I give Mike 95% of the credit. But I also keep an all-too-keen eye on these little seedlings that have grown into full blown adults to make sure they are getting their daily TLC.

Why should you care, and what does this have to do with marketing and business potential? Everything. It dawned on me when I was watching Discovery Channel's "Plant" edition of "Life" yesterday evening.

Plants are the ultimate marketers and survivalists, just like a good business. They find crazy ways to defeat the odds and come out on top and in shining, radiant color. (Now I sound like Oprah narrating "Life".) Here's the way it translates in my little business mind. Plants as marketers are:

Entrepreneurs - Making a livelihood of starting lots of smaller offshoots and nurturing them to adulthood.

Weather the Seasons - Knowing when to lie dormant and conserve resources, and when to grow like hell!

Climbers - No mercy for anything that might stand in the way. Stretch and grow or be leapfrogged by the stronger branch and find yourself entangled in their mess.

Enticing Marketers - Knowing how to put out out a beautiful "flower" to entice your target market. It's like entrapment, but in a good way. There is usually a win-win, unless you happen to be a Venus Fly Trap.

Strategic Developers - Sun-seeking and opportunity-seeking are one in the same. You have to grow toward the light at the end of the tunnel.

Internal Promotion Buffs - Understanding that the strongest and most active rise to the top but EVERYONE starts at the ground level (There are no shortcuts by the way. You may think there are, but jumping to the top without putting in the work yields weak roots.)

That said, I'd like to introduce you to a few garden stores in and around Seattle that helped provide the raw material I needed to see this lesson come to life.
 Happy gardening...whether it is your business on which you are working or your flower bed. Grow like hell!

1 comment:

Unknown said...

And all along they told me that money doesn't grow on trees...