His final decade
April 9, 2025
Kingdoms: humour, heartache, and healing
April 9, 2025
By Daniel Francis
I have been an entrepreneur since 2017. I would say of my eight-year run, I have only had tangible and lasting success the last year or two. For six or seven years, I was working hard each day but not seeing tangible results.
I worked and worked, not feeling like I was making much headway, but I continued each day anyway.
Yet, almost out of nowhere, things spontaneously began going my way in noticeable ways. I would win a big proposal here, or I would get clients each month without seemingly changing my day-to-day work activities. I had heard that things could change in an instant, but what was happening was still curious.
On a recent visit to the United States, I was brought to a church service by a friend. The pastor there gave a riveting sermon, and there was one portion of what he said that stood out to me.
He gave a story about the Chinese Bamboo tree. Apparently, when you plant it, it requires consistent daily watering. Now that is nothing strange for a plant; however, with this plant, you will be watering daily for five years before it begins growing above ground. Yes, five years.
Could you imagine watering a spot on the ground for five years without seeing anything grow? The remarkable thing about this bamboo is that when it finally sprouts, it can grow 90 feet in 5 weeks. Even in that first 24 hours of sprouting, it can grow several feet.
This phenomenon intrigued me, so I did more research on it. From the research, I learned that even though the bamboo does not sprout over the five years of being watered daily, it is growing extensively below the surface. It develops an extensive root network that creates a solid foundation for the 90-foot growth upwards.
It became clear to me that my journey in entrepreneurship and the Chinese Bamboo tree had a lot in common. I had to add value to myself and my business daily through learning, experimenting, and following good business practices like the plant being watered.
Even though I could not see any major changes, the work I was doing was building a sturdy foundation to support my inevitable growth, just like the plant’s development of an extensive root system to create a strong foundation before growing 90 feet.
What is your Chinese Bamboo tree? Is it your business, your career, your education, or whatever way you have been adding value to yourself?
We pray for the success to come, but when God does not give it to us in our timing, we become complacent, not realising that He is doing the work below the surface to prepare us for the growth.
If not for the consistent daily adding of value, there would be no strong foundation. If not for the strong foundation, we would not be able to handle the success.
Imagine you are four years and 364 days into watering your tree, and you give up on the final day, not realising you are one day away from the surface growth.
We must have faith to be patient that if God says this is what will happen, it will happen. Maybe it won’t happen today or the next year or even five years down the line, but it will happen if He says it will.
I have always felt that patience and consistency in showing up each day, in whatever form that looks like, is the recipe for success. So, whether you are in year one or year five of watering your tree, stay patient and ask God for the strength to keep going once this is the path He has set out for you, and be ready for the day that the sprout emerges from the ground.
Daniel Francis is a millennial helping other millennials. He is a two-time author of the books The Millennial Mind and The Millennial Experience, and an entrepreneur. Over the past four years, he has served as a Personal Development Coach whose work targets Millennials and helps them tap into their full potential. He is also a self-publishing coach and has guided hundreds on self-publishing their book successfully.
LinkedIn: Daniel Francis
IG: o.m.publishing
Website: www.ompublishing.org
