This time of year, I’m reminded of the ridiculous abundance of nature.

I walk my dog through the woods and there are berries everywhere, mostly not getting picked. Not by people, bears, birds, or whatever else eats berries.

Nature sucks water out of dirt and turns it into something sweet. Then it produces more of it than, apparently, anyone can keep up with.

If that isn’t a miracle, I don’t know what is.

I have raspberries in my backyard. I didn’t plant them. In fact, they grow so aggressively that I do regular battle with them, hacking them back to some level of restraint.

I picked berries over the weekend. Despite never planting them, and despite my best efforts to destroy many of them, there were more ripe raspberries than I could eat. Enough had already fallen to the ground to fill another bucket, if I had wanted to pick those up.

Nature is abundant. It produces more than is needed. That’s the natural order.

The natural order doesn’t mean that’s what always happens all the time. I’ve tried to grow blueberries in my backyard. Twice. They are all dead. I still don’t know exactly what went wrong.

I suspect user error.

If I studied what blueberries need and created the right conditions, I could probably grow them. In the meantime, if I’m not fussy about which berry I eat, there are more raspberries than I can keep up with.

Scarcity and Opportunity

Many leaders don’t experience business this way.

They experience scarcity.

There won’t be enough work. Enough employees. Enough customers. Enough money. Something is or will change in the economy, technology, regulation, or competition, and: There won’t be enough for us.

Right now, AI is disrupting parts of the economy. Data centers raise legitimate questions around energy, infrastructure, and water. These are real issues. But not new ones.

In the past, it was a new factory, a mine, an interstate, foreign competition, automation, or any other shift that changed the way business was done.

Things change. Like seasons change. They always have. That doesn’t mean opportunity disappears.

I’m not naive about this. I used to work in international disaster relief. I’ve spent a lot of time in refugee camps. Famine, drought, war, and disaster are all real.

But even in those environments, there were always some people who found ways to improve their circumstances. Not always legally or admirably. But they saw opportunities and acted on them.

The people who waited for someone else to solve their problems generally had a harder experience. The people who decided to do what they could, work with what they had, and create the best life possible under the circumstances were often surprisingly successful.

I remember working in Kosovo after the war. Many people insisted that the economy was dead and ‘someone’ needed to come and give them jobs.

Then I started seeing outsiders move in, set up roadside shops, and make money. Literally within the rubble.

Difficult conditions are real. But difficult conditions and challenges do not equal the absence of opportunity.

The question isn’t whether opportunity exists. The question is whether we see it and act on it.

I’ve been consulting since 2004. That time period covers several recessions, including the housing market collapse, wars, major economic shifts, COVID, and other major changes.

At first, I struggled. You might say I had an ideological approach to business. I wanted it to work a certain way. I was wrong but persistent. Not always the best combination.

Then my wife became pregnant with our first child. That jolted me out of some unhelpful mental frameworks. And my business grew and grew and grew.

My environment hasn’t changed. (OK, I moved to the next-door office.) But the way I saw it and related to it did.

Five Challenging Questions

If you are struggling with this, ask yourself these questions. It’s OK if you don’t have immediate answers. Let the questions agitate you until you change your leadership mindset:

• Am I willing to move toward where the work is instead of insisting it show up the way I want?
• Am I willing to learn the skills the market needs and wants instead of only offering the ones I enjoy or prefer?
• Am I creating conditions that encourage growth, helping people know, like, and trust me, or do I insist that growth should occur regardless of the conditions I create?
• How well do I understand, not just my trade, but the business of my business? How willing am I to invest and grow?
• What do I tend to conclude or learn during ‘famine’ times? Do I learn lessons that will make me more successful and resilient? Or do I interpret challenges as evidence that success isn’t possible?

You can see the same dynamic in almost any industry.

Two businesses operate in the same geography, selling similar services to similar customers:

• One has more work than it can handle and is struggling to hire enough people.
• The other can’t find or secure enough work.

They operate in the same environment. But they are getting very different results.

Abundance does not mean that opportunity climbs into your bank account by itself. Raspberries still have to be picked. Blueberries require the right conditions.

If business feels scarce right now, don’t ignore that reality. Scarcity hurts. It creates pressure and can narrow your thinking. But don’t assume that what you can currently see is all that exists.

Look for where demand has moved. Learn what you now need to know. Create better conditions for growth. Let the difficult season teach you something that prepares you for the next one.

You may not be able to make everything grow.

But you can make something grow.

And sometimes growth starts by noticing that there are raspberries all around you.

Take good care,

Christian