Tend Your Roots
Inside the conversations that surface when growth stops working
A Note Before We Begin
This week, I want to step briefly behind the curtain.
Cooper North isn’t a case study or a character meant to entertain. He’s a lens—a way of exploring the kinds of moments many of us find ourselves in, often without a clear script.
Moments when the numbers start to slip.
When familiar strategies stop working.
When the pressure to decide arrives before clarity does.
Through Cooper’s story, we’re not looking for neat answers. We’re looking at how decisions actually form—in conversations, in memory, and in the quiet spaces where insight begins to surface.
As you read, you may recognize pieces of your own work, leadership, or life reflected here. That’s intentional.
This isn’t just where Cooper is headed.
It’s an exploration of what moments like this ask of all of us.
Cooper North didn’t need another report to know something was wrong.
The numbers were slipping—not crashing, not collapsing, but steadily enough to be unmistakable. Clients who had renewed for years were choosing not to.
Conversations that once felt settled now ended with “let’s pause” or “we’ll revisit this later.”
What unsettled him most wasn’t the loss itself.
It was the lack of explanation.
There was no single failure. No broken process. No obvious misstep. The dashboards told him what was happening—but not why.
And there was something else he couldn’t quantify.
A quiet restlessness in the office.
Key people asking careful questions.
He sensed that if he didn’t get his footing soon, he might lose more than revenue.
Cooper had spent decades trusting numbers as signals. He still did.
But he also knew this: when the numbers stop explaining themselves, the problem isn’t measurement.
It’s meaning.
So instead of chasing another metric, Cooper started changing the conversations—one room at a time.
The Client Room
“I appreciate you making the time,” Cooper said. “I know this is a busy season for you—and I think we both also know that our committed time working together will soon be coming to a close.”
Not a warning. Just context.
“Before we talk about what comes next,” he continued, “I think it’s important for me to share a bit of what we’re looking at on our end.”
“Going forward, we’re focused on two questions,” Cooper said. “What do we want to shift in our work to make more possible for our clients, and what do we want to protect as we do that?”
The client nodded. He wasn’t bracing. He was listening.
“But what I’m really here to understand,” Cooper added, “is what about you?”
He paused, then asked the question carefully.
“When you look down the road, what are you building here? What is it you want to make possible?”
The client leaned back in his chair.
He paused—not because the question was unfamiliar, but because it named something he’d already been carrying.
“That’s a fair question,” he said slowly. “And honestly, it’s one we’ve been circling ourselves.”
They didn’t talk about renewals first.
They talked about direction.
About what kind of growth still felt true—and what no longer did.
When their conversation eventually turned back to their future together, Cooper sensed that something important had shifted.
The Team Room
The conversation with his team confirmed what Cooper had begun to suspect.
The issue wasn’t effort.
Or talent.
Or commitment.
The work still functioned. The systems still held.
But the meaning had thinned.
They talked about the work that energized them and the work that quietly drained them. About clients they were proud to serve, and others they’d taken on because it felt safer than saying no.
No one used the word crisis.
They didn’t need to.
Stories, Cooper knew, always show up in the numbers eventually.
The Third Room
The third room surprises him.
It isn’t scheduled.
It doesn’t feel strategic.
And it doesn’t happen in a boardroom.
It’s the coffee shop across from his office. The one where, years ago, he held meetings before the building was finished. Before conference rooms. Before branded mugs. When ideas were sketched on napkins, and possibility felt close enough to touch.
He goes there for a break.
And runs into someone who remembers.
“Cooper North,” the man says, smiling as if no time has passed. “I haven’t seen you in years.”
They talk easily. Families. The city. How fast everything seems to move now.
Then the man pauses.
“You know what I always liked about you back then?”
Cooper waits.
“You asked different questions,” he says. “Not just about growth—but about why it mattered.”
Cooper smiles. Something tightens in his chest.
What lingers isn’t the conversation.
It’s the memory.
Who Cooper was when the company was still becoming, when the work was less refined, but more alive.
When success wasn’t just measured.
It was felt.
A Solitary Room
That night, Cooper sat alone.
The numbers were still slipping.
Clients were still hesitating.
Time was still doing what it always does.
But something had shifted.
He could really see now that the problem wasn’t the numbers themselves. It was the story they were being asked to follow.
He reached for the journal Ellis had given him and opened it to a page he’d marked earlier.
Funny thing about trees—you never see the roots unless there’s a problem.
Cooper let that line sit.
Growth wasn’t the issue.
It never had been.
The question was whether what he’d been building was still supported by what he’d been tending.
What am I building on?
And is it still holding me up?
Before you move on, consider this line from Ellis’s journal:
“You never see the roots unless there’s a problem.”
Then take a moment to sit with these questions:
Where are the numbers telling me what is happening, but not why?
What might they be pointing me toward instead?What conversations have I been postponing because I don’t yet know the answer?
With a client? A team member? Myself?What am I trying to protect right now—and what am I willing to shift to do that?
Be honest about both.Who remembers me from an earlier chapter of my work or life?
What would they say I used to care about most?What questions did I used to ask—before efficiency, optimization, or urgency took over?
You don’t need to solve anything yet.
Just notice what surfaces.
Because when the dialogue changes, the story can change.
And the numbers will follow.
What Comes Next
Cooper hasn’t stopped thinking about growth.
But he’s stopped assuming that more is the answer.
The conversations he’s had have shifted his attention downward, not outward, and toward what’s been carrying the work all along.
Next week, we stay with him as he begins to examine what’s been neglected, what’s been overextended, and what it might mean to tend the foundations before reaching for the next branch.
Because growth doesn’t fail when the market changes.
It fails when the roots are left unattended.
Publisher’s Note: If you’re new to The Possibility Factor, this publication takes you behind the scenes each week as I write the book currently carrying that same working title. Our central character is Cooper North, a business owner who is at a crossroads and learning that much of what he thought he knew isn’t giving him the answers that he needs. An unlikely mentor gives him a journal—one that isn’t offering answers, but better questions.
You can find the earlier chapters and reflections collected here: The Possibility Factor.
This is beautifully framed. What I appreciate most is the intentional lack of tidy resolution, because real life rarely offers one. Cooper North isn’t a fictional caricature designed to entertain us; he’s a mirror for the very real moments when strategy stops working and we discover that clarity often comes after the decision, not before it.
The way you describe decisions forming in conversation, in memory, in silence is exactly how many of us have experienced breakthrough. It’s not the moment the lightbulb turns on that defines the experience, but all the messy, unglamorous minutes leading up to it.
There’s great courage in writing that acknowledges:
• uncertainty isn’t a flaw,
• pressure isn’t proof,
• and insight often emerges in the quiet spaces we tend to rush past.
Thank you for inviting readers into that space.