Rethinking Business Strategy: How To Use The Principles Of Farming To Grow Your Business

As a young entrepreneur who has been in the world of business going to 5 years now, from my little experience I can categorically tell you this – business is not a 100 meters dash, but a marathon. If you are one of those survival driven entrepreneurs who hope to hit it big in business over a short period of time, then I am afraid you’ve chosen the wrong path.

In my opinion, the major cause of many business failures is because of the short term get-rich-quick mindset a lot of entrepreneurs bring into the business world. When business is approached from the viewpoint of making it fast [quick] rather than making it last [thrive], then failure is inevitable.

When as an entrepreneur your focus is on how soon you are going to cash out rather than how long you are going to stand out, then failure is inevitable. Business I say to you again is not a 100 meters race, but a marathon. It takes time to mature and will never happen overnight.

The funny reality as have been proven time and again is that only those few entrepreneurs with a long term view of business finally end up accumulating the wealth short term thinkers often focus on more. The very ones who go into business to cash out quickly [fast] end up being the ones disappointed. Why? Because business is just like farming – you reap only what you sow!

Why Business is like Farming

Before the advent of industrialization, there existed only two types of business; hunting and farming. Hunters are known to kill what they eat, while farmers are known to grow what they eat. In the short run, the hunter may seem smarter than the farmer, since their efforts seem to yield faster results – point and kill. But on the long run, a farmer’s effort pays more even though it may appear slower because their efforts tend to yield longer lasting results.

For instance, when a farmer plants a seed, it grows into a tree that continues to provide food for the farmer over a long period of time so long as the tree is properly nurtured. But when a hunter kills an animal, the meat cannot sustain him for long, so he constantly needs to be hunting for animals to kill every time he needs to eat.

Rarely do hunters hunt today what they will eat tomorrow. Why would they want to do such a thing, when they can just readily kill another animal and have a fresh supply of meat as the need arises? Just knowing that there are always animals in the bush completely dissolves the hunter’s need to plan for the long term. Why bother storing meat, when you can get it fresh whenever you need it? In other words, hunting is for eating.

This is not the case with farmers. You cannot hope to eat today the yam or apple you planted today, or even yesterday, or even a month ago. Why? Because crops unlike animals in the bush takes time to grow and are not stumbled upon, but rather are cultivated. Unlike hunting, you cannot walk into a farm with the hope of harvesting a crop you didn’t plant.

In farming, to harvest [reap], you must plant [sow]. You get only as much as you’ve given. Therefore, to eat well tomorrow, means you must have planted what you intend to harvest a long time ago. This is the same principle on which successful businesses are built.

The Farmer’s recipe for business success

To succeed in the world of business, as an entrepreneur, you must get rid of every get-rich-quick mindset of a hunter and begin to embrace the grow-rich-big mindset of a farmer. Hunters are more into business for the immediate gains it can bring, while farmers are in it for the long haul. Success as it ironically turns out, comes only to the farmer and not to the hunter.

In business, just like farming, you don’t build to reap fast [quick], you build to reap large [big]. You want to reap what will sustain you over a long period of time while you are waiting for the next harvest to come. Because you know how long you must wait to reap, you make sure what you sow is of the best quality so that it doesn’t wither and die before the next harvest season. This is why every farmer only sows their best seeds.

How much [quantity] and how well [quality] you harvest [reap] is dependent on the quantity and quality of the seed you planted [sow]. Farmers have discovered the secret of success; they sow as much as they want to reap. They spend the majority of their time planting and cultivating rather than hunting, because they have realized that what you grow [plant and cultivate] yields a far greater returns than what you get [hunt and kill].