Why the easiest path leads to nowhere

Pick the Low Hanging Fruit - it’s tempting, right?

For a young business, it’s the easy path to success.

Take the referral call. Do the website for your cousin. Help your ex-neighbor’s landlord get their business started.

Fruit is high in energy.

Minimal effort to pick, satisfying reward when it works out, fuel for the day, maybe the week.

But easy fuel also attracts our pesky little friends, the fruit flies.

These nuisances are also drawn to the low-hanging fruit, seeking a quick sugar high.

This forces you to make a choice.

Pick the fruit too early, and it won’t taste very good.

Pick it too late, and the flies have already made it home.

Pick it at the perfect time and you can’t enjoy it, because you’re already full from all the fruit that fell from the tree.

A two-week feast that leads to famine in the winter months.

To protect yourself, you’ve got to become a farmer.

Take an active role in your orchard.

Water opportunities at the right time.

Control pests using your desired methods.

Listen to what the trees are telling you.

Nurture growth.

Pick at precisely the right time.

Defend your turf during the entire journey. Put a fence around it.

When the harvest comes, have a team standing by to help get the work done.

Build your distribution network of grocery stores to buy your fruit at a fair price.

Don’t just settle for low-hanging fruit.

Because if you do, you might just find yourself swatting away fruit flies for the rest of your life.