We installed a new garden this past Spring and from early May up until now, it has brought me nothing but joy.

It’s not the kind of productivity that shifts the bottom line or provides immediate gratification and there is no algorithm involved, just an urge to show up every day, twice a day. A slow process that requires presence over pushing.

Before I’ve even pour my morning tea, I head out into the garden, pajamas still on, excited and curious to see what has grown overnight. It’s a ritual that has forced me into a different kind of mode, one that shifts me into slowing down, rather than racing to keep up.

Entrepreneurship and gardening have a lot in common. Planting seeds, watering them, examining them, dealing with pests and even pulling out the plants that aren’t growing. It’s a constant rotation of observing what’s working and what’s not.

Some things I planted from seed, and I can’t tell you the pride I feel watching them burst from their shells into small living things. Witnessing this birth is like witnessing a shooting star over and over again. It’s breathtaking.

I even built a little compost bin in each garden bed, and bought earthworms to help create rich healthy soil. This process of turning trash into treasure reminds me of the beauty of the life cycle. In business it can be likened to “lessons learned” but the reality is, when you compost your lessons, nothing ever goes to waste.

Somewhere between the seed and the sprout, the blossoms and the squash and the earth worms doing their miraculous work underground - I am reminded of something I keep forgetting.

Growth doesn't perform. It just happens.

Hustling harder doesn’t work in the garden. It doesn't care if you post about it every day, it’s on its own schedule and doesn’t give a s**t about the algorithm. It doesn’t exist to impress you, or anyone else. It's only mission is to nourish you, inside and out. It drinks up the water, the light, the energy in the ground, and produces miracles.

I started StereoType the same way I started this garden. Not with a perfect plan or even a clue about how to keep it going, but with a seed. A belief that something could grow from what others might overlook. That a child dressing freely is also seed, an acorn that holds thousands of trees, and doesn’t need reminding of its purpose.

Given the right conditions, the garden - like the child - flourishes.

My garden reminds me to marvel at the small. To take note of the tiny Universe under the soil working its magic, in the humble home I made for them. And to notice life bursting forth with little to no effort from me.

Some days the most radical thing a founder can do is put down their phone, get their hands dirty, and trust that what they've planted is already growing.

Choose the garden over the grind. Even just for an hour. You won’t be sorry.