Bramble

Bramble Patch Purpose

Is time management important to you? You may not have even thought about it until someone asked you to add one more to a long list of tasks or you got sent on a time management training course. Maybe you have just found that it’s impossible to do everything you might WANT to do? And you also realised that typical time management doesn’t mean anything to you. Have you ever thought of looking about you into nature for inspiration?

You CAN get everything done that you NEED to do if you take some tips from the bramble patch.

You may have brambles in your garden. Perhaps you planted them for their fruit or they may have just grown there and you would love to get rid of them! If you don’t have any brambles in your yard, there may be some in a rural location you visit to collect berries in the autumn.

Whether you have a bramble you love or not, almost everyone knows about the briar patch, the prickles and the juicy fruit but did you know you can also learn about time management from the bramble? Brambles are prickly shrubs with long looping thorny shoots – only the blackberry in the UK – but also including the raspberry in the US. There are thought to be 1,000 different varieties of bramble worldwide! So it is a widespread and successful plant. But how does it demonstrate time management?

Time Management starts with a Purpose.

(If you want to find out about your own purpose, scroll straight down to the bottom of this article now.)
The bramble has one purpose, to spread as far and wide as it can and to hold onto any territory it has gained. Any gardener knows that unwanted brambles are VERY difficult to remove and the longer you put it off, the harder it gets and the bigger the patch grows. In order to achieve its purpose, the bramble needs to hold onto the ground it has, spread into new areas and protect its core, in case of damage. These are its main goals.

Needs To Keep Ground Already Won

Protection

The bramble doesn’t want to get eaten by animals as a source of food, so its shoots have strong thorns that provide good protection from grazing animals. These thorns are also backward facing and can help shoots move rapidly through the undergrowth as they grow. The shoots grow in a tangle because their ends root into the ground, forming loops that rapidly create an impenetrable tangle.

Needs to Spread

Long arching shoots

In order to gain new ground, the bramble has to spread. It does that by getting resources (water, sunshine) and using these to send long shoots arching quickly into the air (to gain distance) and which then bend down to the ground. If the tip touches the ground, it sends out roots and a new plant becomes established.

Flowers and fruit

It also spreads by means of its fruit which is sweet and juicy and very attractive to many animals, including humans. The fruit includes seeds that are highly resistant to digestive system acids. They can also survive for 100 years! Animals eat the fruit and the seeds get scattered in their dung, so they have their own source of fertiliser ready made. The seeds create new bramble patches at a distance from the parent plant if they reach somewhere suitable.

Need To Protect Its Core

Brambles have a perennial underground rootstock. It is hidden below the earth, making it resistant to damage and possibly keeping it safe from fire.

So what is Your Purpose?

The bramble’s purpose is to spread as far and wide as it can. (OK, I know that a bramble doesn’t have a brain, nor does it appear to make conscious choices, however, its ACTIONS appear to be as good a way as any of determining what its purpose might be if it were a sentient being.)

What is your purpose? Why are you here, what is it you want to achieve?

Do you want just to survive and keep your head down, making as few waves as possible, just to get by?

Is your purpose to bring up your children as best you can?

Maybe it’s to be a success in your chosen employment or to win a race or achieve a difficult goal?

What Do You Need To Do To Achieve That Purpose?

The bramble needs to spread, to gain ground, (using looping shoots and seeds), it needs protection (thorns) and it needs to keep its core safe (perennial underground roots).

Brambles are highly successful plants, spreading aggressively, protecting themselves and keeping their core safe. They demonstrate time management through their actions in achieving their PURPOSE and in using their GOALS (spread, protect, hidden core) to achieve their purpose.

How can YOU copy the bramble and achieve YOUR purpose?

If you want to find your life purpose, watch this video:

https://youtu.be/js_Q27lMs_8

You can get the book at

Are You A Bramble Marketer?

On my frequent walks in the local area, I get time to observe the local environment and sometimes really useful ideas spring up from things I have seen. The local hedgerows have a lot of brambles and this year, they have been shouting at me to watch them and learn.

What do you think of brambles?

• A garden nuisance, with their long thorny stems, that are painful and difficult to remove?
• A walker’s or forager’s favorite, with juicy black fruits ready to pick and munch in autumn?
• Or maybe you have never really thought about them at all?

Secrets

The bramble holds several secrets that we can learn from if we want. For instance:

• Did you know there are said to be 1000 described species of bramble in the world, with over 320 microspecies?
• The study of brambles has its own name – batology.
• Even more important, the bramble is excellently adapted to obtain its nutrients and light at the expense of other species.

So?

Read on to see what that means for YOU and Your Motivation to Market:

• A bramble is any tangled, prickly, rough shrub, usually a blackberry in the UK, though it may also be a raspberry in the USA.
• It has an underground, perennial rootstock that throws up new shoots or suckers in the Spring. Perennial means it lives for many years.
• The new shoots last for two years.
• In their first year, these shoots grow as very long arching stems, reaching down to the ground.
• If the tip of the shoot touches the soil it can develop roots and form a daughter plant. Those roots then form part of the underground rootstock.
• In the second year, these shoots develop flowers and then fruits.
• Brambles are difficult to eradicate once they have become established.
• If you try removing the rootstock, anything left below ground may regenerate.
• The root systems will be so wide-spread and interwoven that removing them would require digging up the entire area.

OK, so what does all this information mean for secrets in marketing motivation?

Bramble Root System – Perennial Rootstock

The root of the bramble plant is persistent and perennial, it lasts for years.

Being underground it is hidden.

For established bramble patches it spreads all over the area and is very hard to get rid of.

New shoots (first year) try to arch to a distance from the parent plant and then reach down to touch the ground, forming a new perennial rootstock at a distance from the parent plant.

The rootstock throws up new shoots every year.

Learning Points

How can you make your product(s) or your marketing efforts perennial, so they will last for years?

What does “hidden underground” mean for your marketing (or product)?

How can you keep your rootstock spreading so it is hard to get rid of and any left over piece will send up new shoots?

What new shoots do you need to throw up?

Trip Hazard

On footpaths and in areas of semi woodland, say, brambles can create a trip hazard with those first-year arching shoots that root at their tips.

Learning Points

How can you trip your customers into staying on your web page or with your promoted product, so they stay longer, perhaps buy more?

Any “trip” needs to be ethical, to keep your customer interested. What would interest them? Do you know what brought them to that page? What did they expect or want? Can you give them more of that?

First year bramble shoots

These are the long, dangly, arching stems that try to reach as far as possible from the parent plant. Once they touch the ground, they send out new roots. That starts a fresh bramble bush, with the same genetics as the parent.

Learning Points

Can you send out long first-year bramble shoots in YOUR business?

What would those look like? For the bramble, they are still part of the original bush and spread it further.

How can you spread your niche further?

Is there another micro niche you could spread into?

Maybe a different variation of a successful product?

Second year shoots

These shoots are shorter and close to the main plant. This may be because many of the the long first year shoots have been cut back to keep the paths open and not choked with brambles.

These shoots can bear fruits and flowers simultaneously, that is, they keep flowering throughout the summer, even after fruit has been set. The bramble needs the flowers to produce the fruit. It uses the fruit to spread itself further. The fruit contains seeds. The fruit is attractive to animals as well as humans, these eat the fruit and spread the seed, possibly a LOT further than the first year arching shoots can do.

Learning Points

What “fruit” are you using to attract your customers?

What “seed” is contained within?

How will this help you increase your marketing reach?

If you consider this as your social media marketing, your fruit is the meme, picture or quote that everyone wants to share. What seed or message goes along with it? Your URL? A product review? Maybe a free gift that can spread your message?

Keeps flowering

The bramble keeps on flowering even when ripe fruit is available. It takes no account of the fruit that has already been produced, after all, who knows whether the seed in that fruit will reach a suitable site? The only way to reach new ground is to keep on flowering and producing fruit.

Learning Points

Are there any time management techniques you need to employ to follow this strategy? Outsourcing? Automation?

Conclusion

The bramble is a survivor. Its seed can survive up to 100 years and STILL sprout. It spreads 3 ways, by extending its underground root system, by sending out long shoots to form new plants and through seeds, dispersed by animals. The rootstock is perennial (lives many years) and hidden and sends up new suckers or shoots every year.

It is an amazing plant. (I love blackberries in any form).

It also provides a lot of lessons in motivation and marketing. Are you a bramble marketer?

Want A WorkBook For This?

You can get a workbook with the learning points in it as a 3 page downloadable PDF here.