Good Timber Comes from Hardship

A few famous startups enjoy seemingly nonstop luck and success. This blog treats those as the exception, not the rule. Most startups, however, face hardships. These can also do really well as they face up to their challenges and execute skillfully.

Hardships are a refining fire that can strengthen and refine a young company and its people.

On Sunday, I heard an inspirational talk by Thomas S. Monson about facing hardship. The talk included a poem that beautifully illustrates how good timber comes from hardship:

“This should be our purpose—to persevere and endure, yes, but also to become more … refined as we make our way through sunshine and sorrow. Were it not for challenges to overcome and problems to solve, we would remain much as we are, with little or no progress toward our goal… The poet [Douglas Malloch] expressed much the same thought in these words:

The tree that never had to fight
For sun and sky and air and light,
But stood out in the open plain
And always got its share of rain,
Never became a forest king
But lived and died a scrubby thing.

The man who never had to toil
To gain and farm his patch of soil,
Who never had to win his share
Of sun and sky and light and air,
Never became a manly man
But lived and died as he began.

Good timber does not grow with ease:
The stronger wind, the stronger trees;
The further sky, the greater length;
The more the storm, the more the strength.
By sun and cold, by rain and snow,
In trees and men good timbers grow.

Where thickest lies the forest growth,
We find the patriarchs of both.
And they hold counsel with the stars
Whose broken branches show the scars
Of many winds and much of strife.
This is the common law of life.”

-Thomas S. Monson, as quoted in General Conference on 6/Oct/2013 (extra poem verses added)

How have your startup’s hardships made you stronger?

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