“This furniture takes a decade to grow.”

The idea immediately drew me in, fully cognizant of the clickbait headline.

And in the subsequent 3-minute mini-feature on CNN, British couple Alice & Gavin Munro shared about their company Full Grown, where they grow trees into chairs.

Or actually, grow chairs out of trees.

And yes, each piece can take up to a decade.

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Sounds crazy, right? Impractical for sure.

Planting. Nurturing. Grafting. Molding.

But there’s something refreshing about taking the opposite of a shortcut.

The patience.

The long-term vision.

The resistance to mass-production.

The appreciation of time as a critical ingredient for success.

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And on the other side of that slow, deliberate process?

A truly unique work of art.

Which also happens to be highly functional and exceptionally valuable.

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Remind you of anything?

You spent week after week.

Meeting after meeting.

Performance review to performance review.

For what? Not just a paycheck.

You had a vision of what your career might look like a couple decades out.

Even if you didn't announce it out loud, you kept inching toward it.

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Now, you look down, and what’s grown underneath you?

Perhaps not precisely what you imagined, but instead...

A foundation of expertise built day-by-day, insight-by-insight.

A truly unique work of art.

Which also happens to be highly functional and exceptionally valuable.

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Go ahead, have a seat.

Sit comfortably on it.

But don't sell it short.

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💡

-Wes