EP36: Tending, Not Tactics: A Regenerative Approach to Growing Your Business
Today’s episode begins in a rain-soaked woodland, the first drops falling after weeks of dryness. It’s a moment of relief—for the land and for me. Just after finishing a wild coaching session with a client, I’m walking among the trees, reflecting on a question that’s been showing up for both of us:
What do you do when you’re doing all the right things in your business, but the results just aren’t showing up?
In this episode, I share a simple but powerful metaphor that helped us both: tending a vegetable garden. When we’re building something regenerative—whether it’s a business, a creative offering, or a career—we can plant, water, weed, and enrich the soil. But we cannot force the vegetables to grow on demand.
I explore:
Why trying to force results in your business often leads us back to extractive, manipulative tactics
How capitalism teaches us to equate effort with immediate outcomes—and why that mindset doesn’t hold up in regenerative work
The importance of patience, faith, and trusting the invisible growth happening beneath the surface
How to focus on what you can do: planting seeds (like offers and invitations), tending relationships, and nurturing your creative ecosystem
If you're in a season of slow or invisible growth, this episode is your invitation to step back, breathe, and trust in your garden. You are doing more than you know. And with time, the results will come.
Email me at alisa@regenerativeworklife.com to book your own wild coaching session, or check for availability updates on my Instagram.
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Full Transcript
Alisa: I'm walking through the woods and there are the first drops of rain that we've had for a very long time. It's been weeks and weeks and I think I might have just heard a roll of thunder in the distance. It feels so welcoming of the rain. I'm really looking forward to not having to water my garden, but also to just see how everything shoots up in the next few days.
I've just actually finished a wild coaching session with a client which is why I'm out here in the woods and we were talking about what to do when it feels like you're doing all the right things but you're just not getting the results you want in your business or in your work and in particular how you can navigate that when you're very aware of not falling back into manipulative and extractive practices that we've all been taught by the capitalist system.
And we came up with the analogy that is perhaps a little overused, but I think it really stands up, of planting a garden. We'll go with a vegetable garden specifically. And of course, with a vegetable garden, what you're focused on is the produce. You want the vegetables. And if you're starting with a bare piece of land, or perhaps land that has been worked a little bit and has a little bit of crop here and there, which is kind of the state of my front veggie garden right now, then there are really only a few things that you can do to get to a bountiful crop of vegetables. You can plant seeds, you can water those seeds, you can perhaps provide some organic matter, and you can weed. And beyond that, your scope of responsibility comes to an end. The speed at which those vegetables grow is... entirely in the hands of the universe.
And yet when it comes to getting results in our businesses, we have this slightly kind of godlike fallacy. We think that we should be able to magic the vegetables into being. We should be able to grow vegetables on command and have that produce in front of us if we just will it hard enough. And look, I've been there myself several times. I think it's something that I come back to, a frustration that I feel like I'm doing all of the right things. I know I'm really good at coaching. I see that my clients are learning a lot. They are developing, creating their businesses. They are completely transforming their relationships with work. I see people who come into my wild coaching experiences and they have joyful, insightful experiences. I know that I'm pretty good at marketing and creating content and that I'm finding a freedom and a joy and an energy. And that I know that I have really deep experience as an entrepreneur and in strategic thinking. And then the question comes, well, with all of that, why aren't the results here in the way that I would want them to be? Why isn't it happening at the speed that I would like? Why don't I have all of that vegetable produce in front of me right now?
The thing is, I can't make those vegetables grow. I can plant the seeds. I can make connections with people. I can create offers. I can put out invitations. I can talk about what I do. Those are the seeds that I'm planting. And I suppose in some way that's also the watering or the mulching. I can add on to that, onto those seeds. I can add value. I can teach for free. I can share my experience. I can be as generous as possible in my content, talking about what I've learned and my experience. And I can commit to helping people in any way that I can with no expectation of return. And I can weed. And the weeding equivalent in this analogy is I can look at what I'm doing, where I can make improvements. and I can take out the parts that aren't working and I can make this as healthy, a growing environment as possible. But the part that I simply cannot do is force those vegetables to grow quicker. It just takes time. Now, we know that logically, right? We know with a vegetable, we can put a carrot seed in the ground and we don't expect that carrot to be there tomorrow. Even if, like me, you're the kind of gardener who likes to come out every morning just to check whether that seed has germinated. We know we can't. But in business, we've developed this, as I say, this kind of godlike idea that we can, that we are all powerful and that we can control outcomes and results. And if we let ourselves believe that, I think we'll be disappointed and frustrated every single time. In fact, we'll be focusing our energy entirely in the wrong area, on the part that we have no agency over, instead of the part where we have an awful lot of agency and potential and possibility.
And that is why those of us who are on a regenerative path often find ourselves tempted back turning towards those more manipulative and extractive business practices. Maybe that's creating a false urgency behind our offers or creating fear of missing out, pushing people when they're not ready, guilting or shaming people into working with us, tackling objections in an aggressive way, and generally just seeing people and interactions as opportunities for results instead of human beings that you need to build a relationship with, you need your nurture and care for so that you can together find a way into working together. And I think those manipulative techniques are so tempting because they promise us a sense of control that we don't have. They promise us almost instantaneous results. They're kind of the equivalent of going to the supermarket and just buying up all of our vegetables, regardless of... whether they're in season, whether they're fresh, whether they're coated in chemicals, whether they've been flown around the world. It takes time. And that is just not something that we are very comfortable with in the realm of business. We want things quicker, faster, more efficiently. We want everything to have happened yesterday. And hand in hand with finding that patience with time is faith. We really have to have faith that those seeds that we have planted will grow, that the water will nurture them, that the organic matter will sink in and create a really healthy soil, that if we keep weeding we will create the space and possibility for new and wonderful things to grow.
And it's faith because all of that magic of creation happens down underneath the ground. Most of the growth happens where we can't see it. There's a kind of invisibility to it. And if you're the kind of person who wants to be able to control results and see linear growth day by day and have it all mapped out in metrics, then that can be really frustrating and really challenging. We have to be willing to put in the time. We have to perhaps stretch our idea of how much time something should take well beyond what might feel comfortable. We have to believe in the results that will come if we continue to do the work of nurturing our business. So this is just a simple thought that I wanted to share, if like me, if like my client today, you find yourself feeling impatient, wanting things to happen faster, wanting to feel like you're in control, and that you can see a really tangible, direct correlation between the effort you put in the results that you get out. Try to remember that creating a regenerative business or a regenerative career is much more like planting a garden. You put in the necessary ingredients, you give it your attention, your love, your hope and belief. And with time, those vegetables will grow.
Right, it's time for me to pick my way through the spiky holly branches and head back home. Before I do, I'd like to offer an invitation. If you would like some support and guidance in nurturing the garden that is your regenerative business, then why not join me for a wild coaching session? You can approach these as just a one-off session, so if you've never had coaching before, this can be a really light and easy way to try it. Or if there's just a particular issue that you want to focus on and you're not ready for the commitment of long-term coaching, then this can be a great option as well.
Here's how it works. Wherever you are in the world, you find a place that you can be out in nature, whether that's a park or a hike or a trail or your garden or sitting on your windowsill, whatever is accessible to you. And I will be out here in my woods with the birdsong. And we will do our coaching session together. Any topic that you need some help and support with. I'm currently offering these sessions at £150 for a two-hour walk and coaching session. If you're interested, you can see weekly availability updates on my Instagram. I'm there as Regenerative Worklife. Or you can send me an email at: alisa@regenerativeworklife.com. Thanks for listening and I'll see you next time.
