You Can't Separate the Petal from the Flower

Walking in the neighborhood behind our building is stunning right now.

It's a feeling of awe

The flowering trees are in bloom, with vibrant shades of pink, fuchsia, and white contrasting the bright green young leaves and the pops of purple flowers sprouting from the grass below them.

When I was younger, I didn’t understand why people were so crazy about flowering trees. I remember walking through the garden center, pictures in front of each specimen showing the tree in all its flowering glory.

Why, I wondered, did people pick trees based on a snapshot in time that lasts mere moments each year? Shouldn't they care more about what the tree looks like for the other 50 weeks?

But here I am, all these years later, walking through a neighborhood bursting into spring thinking: is there anything on this planet more beautiful than this right now?

A big part of my journey through life and business has been dealing with my relationship with ambition. I've often used the metaphor of climbing to the top of a mountain, only to enjoy a brief fleeting moment of accomplishment before seeing the next mountain ahead.

Surely life isn't about toiling away just for a moment of accomplishment. Just like the trees, why would we spend all of our attention on the destination when the journey is where we spend most of our time?

And yet the beauty of the trees is so deep and intense that in that moment, it all feels worth it.

As I continued my walk, I noticed the few remaining petals of the magnolia tree sitting at the edge of the gutter. You wouldn't have known it was fully in bloom two weeks ago if you'd missed it. But at that time, you also wouldn't have known that thousands of wildflowers were sitting below the surface, waiting for the perfect moment to burst through the soil, painting the lawns with brushstrokes of bright purple and white.

Was my appreciation of the magnolia two weeks ago distinctly separate from my awe of the wildflowers this morning? I wondered too if I'd feel as moved if the magnolia was all that was in bloom.

Maybe it was the sheer volume that made such an impression on me. Or the contrast of colors. Or was it that winter still had a grip on the neighborhood less than a month ago?

Maybe it's not the moment that matters. It's the moments.

But what is a moment anyway? What separates one from another? Is today really so different from yesterday? Where do you draw the line?

And what separates a petal from a flower from a tree from a neighborhood? At some point, the parts disappear into the whole.

It makes me think differently about ambition. We treat achievement like a discrete moment. But anyone who has tasted success would say it wouldn’t feel as sweet without people around you to celebrate or as satisfying without the struggle of the journey that preceded it.

Does the achievement exist without the other parts? Does a flower exist without its petals?

Maybe that's the real lesson I'm taking from this walk.

We talk about scaling businesses the way I used to think about flowering trees – fixating on the peak moment. The exit. The milestone. The number. As if the whole point were that one snapshot in time.

But just like my neighborhood in bloom, you can't isolate one petal and call it beautiful. The bloom only means something because of the branches, the soil, the winter, the people noticing it. Take any one of those away, and there is no meaning.

That's why I push back on the idea that there's only one right way to build a business – and that way ends with fast growth and a clean exit.

Because if you're only looking for the magnolia, you'll miss the thousands of wildflowers growing quietly beneath the surface.

The journey of entrepreneurship isn't the consolation prize for not reaching your destination fast enough. It's where life is actually happening. So you might as well enjoy it.

And that's the beauty. Because you get to choose.

You get to choose how big and how fast. You get to choose how you spend your time and who you work with. You get to choose your flowers.

So stop following somebody else's playbook.

The question worth asking isn't "how do I get there?" It's "what are we building, and how do we become the thing we want to be?"