Look for sticks where sticks fall

A few weeks back I went camping with my girlfriend, Alec, at Samuel P. Taylor campground above San Francisco. It was an amazing campground. There are huge trees all around it and it feels as if you are in a place so spectacular that it cannot be real. We stayed their for three nights, and each night we had a camp fire to keep us warm and so we could roast marshmallows. For anyone that is familiar with making a campfire, you know one of the ingredients is kindling, or smaller pieces of wood. So, each night before we would make the fire, Alec and I would pick up little pieces of branches all around our camp site to serve as kindling for our fire. Not surprisingly, most of the pieces of wood were at the base of the tall trees. Makes sense, right? If you look for sticks where sticks fall, chances are high that you will find sticks.

But sometimes in business, it feels that we don’t look for sticks where sticks fall. Sometimes it feels like we are looking for sticks in a gigantic asphalt parking lot, with no trees in sight. Would you expect to find sticks in a Walmart parking lot?

But what if everyone else is looking for sticks in the same area?

We ran into this problem when we were camping. The most trees most convenient to our campground were picked clean. There was not a stick in sight. So, we had to search for other trees. What we found was surprising. Bigger sticks! The rewards that we received by going to the less convenient trees was significantly higher than what we would have received had we sat around picking from the already scavenged trees.

Look for sticks where sticks fall, but don’t be afraid to venture out to trees further out, chances are the rewards will be greater.