21 Aug Business Lesssons from Plants vs. Zombies
The adventures of a new massage therapist are proving to be… well… adventurous. Lots of ups and downs, excitement and worry… and when I need a few moments of mental nothingness – I play a few rounds Plants vs Zombies. The kiddos and I share a profile on my phone, so we have completed the game a few times through and have started up a pretty sweet Zen Garden. So much so, I find myself checking into the 
garden first… the little dancing, animated plants need water and music, fertilizer and spray… these things lead to them growing… but eventually… they stop asking for things… stop growing and no matter how much I want the little icon to appear for something else I can click on and get them bigger, showering me with more coins… they just groove along and I have to go play the game for a while.
Driving into the clinic this morning, I was thinking about all the things I could do to grow my new massage business faster and then I thought of the Zen Garden. I remembered a very wise man once said at a WordCamp Houston, “you can’t actually make something grow – you can give it everything it needs to grow – but you can’t force it to grow.” I realized that little animated garden on my phone had something profound to teach me about growing a new business… I can give the business everything I can to help it grow… and then sometimes I just gotta take a break from the tasks of helping it grow – making phone calls, sending emails, writing blog posts, engaging in social media , designing t-shirts, brainstorming marketing ideas – and just let it grow. I need to go play the game… turn off the mental to-do list and go do something else. When I loop back around to my little Zen Garden… or to the little growing business – both will have flourished in my absence and both will let me know what they need to get even bigger.
Now… off to kill more zombies…