Business lessons from the old growth forests
We used to think trees competed for nutrients and sunlight.
We now know that they’re not competing at all – they’re collaborating. Trees give carbon to mycelium, mycelium stores extra sugar and nitrogen, and when a baby tree or a young tree needs it – the web sends them nutrients.
An individual tree doesn’t act in the best interest of the tree. It acts in the best interest of the forest.
In a forest, all thriving is mutual.
Trees are nature. Human beings are also nature.
Trees do four things to create a healthy forest. To make money doing what you love, you need to do the same four things.
Know your contribution
Find your community
Give
Receive
If you do these four things over and over, you will have a profitable business.
You will also have a vibrant and healthy community of friends, neighbors, and unlimited resources.
You won't give away too much. Whatever you give to the collective will come back to you 10x over. No one is taking advantage of you. This is how the system works. This is how you get plugged in.
Dancing in reels, sliding into DMs, and mastering copywriting will not work if you're not doing these four things. You don’t need to master the latest marketing trend when your friends tell their friends who tell their friends.
When you’re not making the money you want to make, give more to your community. Receiving follows giving. If things are harder than you’d like them to be, plug into your community. Build relationships. Join the web. If your work is feeling sleazy or manipulative, you’re taking more than you’re giving. Give more.
This is how you'll build a business that feel really, really good. It's how you'll never feel sleazy, manipulative, or gross about selling. And it's how your work will create a healthy community, immune to the diseases of greed, scarcity, and fear.
These are the business principles that will change the world.
They'll work now, in a capitalist economy. And they'd work if we stopped using money altogether. This is how nature works.
Let’s get to work.