This is a weird topic, I know. You are probably thinking, “Gardening and business? What are you talking about, Dean? You’re being so weird.”
Well, I’m here to walk you through this interesting concept.
Overview & Episode Content
- Start Thinking in Terms of Systems in Everyday Life
- Growth Means Developing a Better System
- A Taste of Sweet Success After Finishing My First Water System
- Systems Allows More People to be Involved in Your Project
- Better Systems Unlock Greater Growth!
Start Thinking in Terms of Systems in Everyday Life
It is so hot over here in California, it will be a hundred degrees; it was a hundred and six degrees yesterday. But guess what? Despite all that heat, my garden is crushing it. Wow.
So, why the heck am I talking about my garden?
When we first got here, I had no idea what I was doing at all. In fact, I had a couple of tomato plants in the backyard of our old house—which was super small. Every single one of them died before producing tomatoes.
I literally had no clue what I was doing there! Translating that to a big acreage recently, I still had no idea what I was doing.
So one of the things that was apparent, living in the hills, is that if you wanted to do gardening or produce food then you must think about what you are doing. It is simply not enough to just do the hard work. The reason is because everything is spread out here. Your garden will be on one spot, your animals are going to be in another corner, etc…
You really have to think of it in a very different way—in terms of systems! And trust me, I did not think in the way of systems for our acreage when we arrived.
The first thing that we had was a chicken coop that my father-in-law helped us build. It was about 600 feet away from our house. In order to get water to the chickens, I would have to carry a big 4-gallon jug from the house down to the coop every day!
Growth Means Developing a Better System
Now, during the winter, carrying a 4-gallon jug every day is not so bad because it would be pretty cool up here. But in the summer, it gets extremely hot.
Can you imagine carrying a 4-gallon bucket every single day down to the chickens? On top of that, you have to bring their food among other things. It was not a good system for the long term.
Next, we built a garden enclosure. In that enclosure, I had several raised beds. But again, there was no water. So now, we had to take water from the house everyday down to the garden and to the chicken coop.
Every single time we wanted to build something else, it completely doubled our work. And it was painful to drag food and water daily across the acreage.
Overtime, I realized that the current system would not end well. There was no way I could have continued to grow if I wanted to add another garden. I realized that I must find a way to bring water to different areas of the acreage.
So, rather than manually do all this stuff—dragging water, food, and other materials all over the place—I decided to spend my time digging a trench that would allow me to pipe water to areas that need water.
Now, I forgot how long it took me to complete the trenches but the ground here is very hard during the summer season. I was doing this project in the middle of summer and I am not kidding when I say it almost felt like cement.
Because of that, I went to Ace Hardware and I got a pickaxe with a rubber handle and other tools. And I spent a little bit of everyday digging trenches from my house up to 500+ feet away to the chicken coop.
A Taste of Sweet Success After Finishing My First Water System
Digging a long trench was very difficult because the ground was so hard during summer! I was just chipping away.
Some days, I only dug a few feet of trench because of how hot it was and how hard the ground became. Sometimes, I would water the ground and wait for the water to soak through before pickaxing at it again.
The deepest I was able to dig was about 10-inches. I know it’s not that great because a trench needs to be dug a little bit deeper but it was working. So, I finally finished and dug a trench all the way to the chicken coop and I ran a PVC piping and put up some hose bibs.
Still, I had no clue what I was doing. Yet, I finished my trench and it looked spectacular! When I was done at 1 AM, I turned on the water at the chicken coop and shouted HALLELUJAH!
It was the best feeling—knowing that I wouldn’t have to lug around that 4-gallon bucket anymore. My kids didn’t have to do it too and allowed them to be more involved.
So moving on from that, I connected water to the chicken coop, the garden enclosure, and some other spots we had. That allowed us to have a fantastic acreage and we were able to produce vegetables, herbs, and eggs!
Systems Allow More People to Be Involved in Your Project
But the next thing I wanted to build was a very large garden area at 2,000 sq. ft. at a spot right next to our house. So I fenced off a whole area there but I needed to run water to that spot as well.
With everything I do today on the acreage, I have to keep in mind that I must build a water system towards that area. So I started to install PVC piping towards that area. Well, it totally worked and I was able to use the line. But I had to uproot the PVC piping because we were changing things around with heavy equipment.
Because we were changing things around so much, I ended up using rubber hoses! These rubber hoses are so tough and they last such a long time! Rather than running PVC piping to this new area, I had rubber hoses installed as a temporary thing. And the cool thing about my rubber hose water system was I made use of different splitters to set up a water system in that garden with timers among other things.
In the end, the beauty of all this is that I have timers that set off misters for the dogs and chickens when it gets hot. I also have timers that water both of my garden and a whole water system that I do not have to touch at all!
If I want somebody to check on them, I simply give them a process sheet that tells them a list of items to check when they go out to see the water systems and make sure that they are working.
Better Systems Unlock Greater Growth!
Before all of this, I would manually water my garden and the biggest problem there is that some days I would forget! So in effect, things were not going well and plants weren’t really growing. But now, I can no longer forget to water my gardens! The system simply works on its own.
Now, I have time to build something else and build another water system towards that new area.
For some, it can be calming to water the garden themselves but your plants are going to grow faster and better when you are developing systems. It does not matter whether you are growing plants or raising animals. Everything does significantly better when you have a water system in place!
The more that you can develop the systems around your garden the more you will see growth. And the exact same thing is true for your business. The more that you develop systems for your business, the more you are going to have time to sit back, relax and reflect on the things you can do next.
What are the next steps that you have to do in order to get to the next level? People will be able to take tasks off of your hand so that you have time to think about what to do next. You will see your garden flourish; you will see your garden grow over time!
Conclusion
It is vital that you align yourself with the right mindset, ”How do I automate things? Or how do I make things easy for me and everyone involved?”
As an example, find ways to create a system where all your sales team has to worry about is the leads that they need to talk to today rather than see all the leads and become unsure how to deal with them.
“How can I make it so that my operations team only sees the customers that they need to reach out to and thank.” That is the way of thinking that makes your business grow.
Just like your garden, it’s a little watering system that allows your business to grow without you.
Resources and Links
This has been Dean Soto. Go check out FreedomInFiveMinutes.com and ProSulum.com. And I will catch you again in the next Freedom In Five Minutes podcast episode.