When experience in the wilderness, builds the richness of symbolism and reverence in the eventual cathedral
If you missed Part One – Lack of Focus or Search for Survival – read it first for context.
In my previous post, I defended the messy reality of founders juggling multiple (potential) revenue streams in order to be generating cashflow from any means possible before a capital infusion from outside investors.
Survival -both for the startup and founders personally- requires that you do whatever you have to, in order to keep the lights on. This is often viewed critically as being distracted, but the reality is that it’s necessary for the vast majority of startups in the early days.
But there’s another important truth that runs parallel to survival: at some point, yes, you absolutely must choose which altar you’re going to polish.
We’ve been thinking about this recently in context of our baby, Beeghee®, and a metaphor that resonates with us: fermentation = devotion.
You provide the ideal conditions, and then you stop interrupting the process. You continue to ensure that conditions are right, and you patiently wait for nature to take its course.
Wine, sourdough, miso, and Hive Fermentation™…the richness deepens with time, not frantic meddling.
The same is true in many ways, of startups.
Exploration is Pollination
Prior to funding, exploration of every avenue possible is a necessity. In a way, each side hustle or product experiment is like pollen scattered by the bees. It looks chaotic from the outside, but to the flowering plants, it’s manna from heaven, and for the hive, it’s valuable reconnaissance.
Some flowers feed the colony, while others don’t – but the honeybees never stop mapping the landscape, looking for efficiencies and productivity.
And over time, as the results of those experiments accumulate, patterns begin to emerge. The team begins to note the difference between noise and nectar.
Here, the proof begins to reveal that what to outsiders looked like a lack of focus was actually disciplined, visionary market research – each experiment an antenna, tuned to find the clearest signal.
The Altar Comes Into Focus
But all that exploration without purpose, can still lead to messy results. At some point, the worker bees seal up the work they’ve done and allow the fermentation to begin.
As founders, eventually we have to do the same. To make a choice, to selectively decide that some altars aren’t worth polishing, while others should be sacred and protected as such.
Which experiments yielded the strongest results? Select the outcome -or outcomes, if reasonable to manage- with the highest potential for scalability, the best margins, the richest storytelling resonance…and then it’s time for absolute dedication, ritually polishing the altar.
This doesn’t imply an abandonment of creativity, but a protection of purity and devotion.
And in a beautiful paradox, the stronger the discipline, the greater the freedom.
Scaling Devotion
This is the place where outside capital and investors often finally enter the picture. And where their base motivation questions -often unspoken, but always implied- meet their answer.
Why are you special?
Why should I trust you?
Because you’ve built numerous altars with a mindset of reverence and a motivation of producing value for the world, you and only you will know which ones deserve to remain and be polished in perpetuity.
Capital, then, merely accelerates the devotion, turning experimentation and survival into lasting depth of meaning.
Raising A Cathedral
Exploration is never wasted time, though it can often seem like it in the moment, treading water and gasping for air.
Yet every altar raised in an attempt to connect with the mysterious and incredible wisdom of the ether, becomes part of your larger cathedral, a brick in the wall, a stone in the foundation, a memory and a symbol of effort, desire, and pain.
The soil, your hive, the broader universe of your intended reach – every project remains connected to the new architecture you build. A testimony of sovereignty, regeneration, of determination to honor life by living it at redline.
But even as you build, you cannot polish an entire cathedral at once. Strategic focus is required, to choose your altar, to honor it daily, to trim the wick and sprinkle the holy water and allow the birds and bees their harmonies.
Survival in the wilderness, requires breadth.
To build a towering monument, a legacy, requires depth.
So never be ashamed if you’re presently scattered, battered by the wind and rain. There is a time and a season for everything – just never give up. Always keep moving, forward, in the direction your vision tells you will reach the goal.
A good investor will be capable of seeing devotion, of understanding the journey through the mud develops a resilience which being born with a silver spoon cannot.
That’s the <only> type of person you want on your team for the next decade.
And when you’ve traversed the barren desert and the frigid alpine, when you’ve crossed frothy oceans and then burned the boats, you’ll know, in the depth of your soul, that this cathedral won’t be built merely by tokens of wealth, but by your own hands, weathered and weary, carrying the character-building scars of a journey that no overflowing coffers or empty pockets can ever take away from you.
In the end, the cathedral you construct and the altars you burnish within it, belong to you and you alone.
Own the process, and the results. Your vision does not depend on capital, on support, on an external network.
Everything depends on the depth of love in your heart for the mission.
Selah. 😉
