If you’ve struggled with the pace your business is growing…here’s my heart for you—and how I believe you’ll forever value firmly rooting your business.

I was watching my 13-year-old daughter yesterday in total awe. In the day-to-day, I often fail to stop and appreciate her “flowering.” I would never speed up time to make my daughter grow up faster. I want her to be firmly rooted in who she is and what she believes before she dates, drives, gets her first social media account, leaves home, etc.

I often joke that my business is my third child, but I seem to raise it differently. When I started my business and again when I launched family films, I felt desperate to see my “business-child” grow up FAST. I wanted to speed up time and was impatient to meet goals. There was no awe for me in the “becoming,” no wonder in the processes at play. I wanted results.

Raising a business isn’t so different from raising a child. Both need a lot of love and nurturing. Both will keep you awake at night worrying. Both are wildly rewarding. A child and a business also both flourish best when they aren’t rushed.

Seven years in, I nearly quit my business because of burnout. I had begun to resent the volume of my work, but it wasn’t actually about the work…the problem was inside me. The business had grown faster than the pace of my soul. I had forced artificial growth.

My business was unmoored because I hadn’t written a mission statement, established healthy boundaries on my time, kept my need for approval in check, truly embraced my clients for who they uniquely were (vs. how they made me look), and on and on. I’d invested time and energy in the business, but not in the ways that really counted.

Businesses (like flowers and teens) may look healthy on the surface…it’s what lies beneath that matters. Satisfaction and sustainability depend on healthy roots. Healthy roots don’t grow magically; they’re cultivated…by you.

If you find yourself in a quiet season, longing for your business’s growth, please don’t despise the day of small things. Take this dormant season to nurture your soul for the hard work of business ahead. When your business has “flowered,” you’ll never regret the work you did “underground” when nobody was looking.

You’ll find that firmly rooting your business was worth the slow, beautiful growth.