Lessons in Growth, Gratitude, and Pruning for What’s Next
Twenty-five years ago, I bought a piece of land that felt alive, yet unnoticed (a great stock pick, right!?)— wild pine and palmetto, magnolia and marsh. It wasn’t just property; it was potential. I didn’t know it then, but was has evolved as our family farm would become both compass and classroom — the ground where I would learn the slow language of seasons, stewardship, and renewal. Add a (goat milk whipped) dollop of community. BONUS.
The land has changed me as much as I’ve shaped it. Over the decades, we’ve planted, increased our herd, watched, worried, and tended. I’ve witnessed the wind in the longleafs, the spin of the windmill and the call of coytoes at dusk. And this year, for the first time, I had to face something I’d long resisted: cutting down trees.
The Pain and Purpose of Pruning
Our forest had become too dense. Pines had grown tall and close, their canopies blocking the light. The understory — where native palmettos, magnolias, and wild ferns once thrived — had gone quiet, and some had died. Without sunlight, diversity suffers. Without air, balance collapses–I’ve felt this over the decades in my high altitude climbing journeys.
So, reluctantly, with foresters at the adjacent property and 50 foot pines and a new hurricane season looming, I made the decision the time was now. They explained what I already knew but didn’t want to accept: Sometimes, care looks like loss. Cutting, though painful, is a form of health — for forests, for lives, and yes, can be said of professionals we have in our lives that have perhaps “seasoned in other directions” and, yes, stocks we’ve grown attached to in our accounts.
As the chainsaws started, I felt the contradiction of it — that something so violent could also be so vital. But nature has a way of teaching what no market chart or balance sheet can. A forest, like a portfolio, cannot thrive on accumulation alone. Growth must be balanced by discernment. Renewal requires release.
After the clearing, the change was immediate. Light poured in. The air moved differently. Within weeks, new shoots began to emerge — palmettos unfurling in the sun, wildflowers returning to the open ground. The ecosystem was breathing again. It reminded me of what I’ve come to understand in my own life: pruning is not the opposite of abundance. It is its precondition.
Finding the Heart: Fatwood and Financial Wisdom
As the land healed, I found something unexpected among the cut stumps — thick veins of amber-colored wood, fragrant and dense: Fatwood.
Fatwood, or heart pine, is the resin-rich core that remains after a pine tree falls or is cut. Over time, the resin hardens within the heartwood, creating a material that resists rot, burns hot, and ignites even when wet. In the old days, it was prized for starting fires and for its reliability when everything else was damp and cold.
What struck me was how it forms. When a pine is wounded — when its bark is breached or it’s cut down — the tree draws resin inward to protect itself, sealing its wounds. What’s left behind, long after decay has taken the rest, is its most concentrated strength. Its essence.
I thought about how often that pattern repeats itself in our lives and in the markets. When growth halts, when cycles turn cold, what endures is the fatwood — the resilient core. The fundamentals. The substance that holds its value even in damp seasons.
In the same way that fatwood ignites a new fire, disciplined portfolios carry within them the capacity to spark renewal — if tended with patience and purpose.
Forests, Portfolios, and Perfect Days
Walking the land now, I think of this cycle as a living metaphor for what I’ve come to call the Perfect Day path — not as a slogan, but as a practice. It’s about alignment: between what we have and what we value, between doing and being, between growth and gratitude. A perfect day isn’t one without challenges. It’s one lived with intention, where even pruning has meaning. In that sense, managing wealth — or tending a forest — becomes a spiritual discipline. It asks us to look closely, to assess what serves, and to clear what doesn’t.
In both investing and living, excess creates noise. We over-plant, over-hold, over-commit — believing more is better. But balance comes not from accumulation, but from curation. From choosing what to keep, what to release, and what deserves the light.
A healthy portfolio, like a thriving forest, depends on diversity — some assets that grow tall and fast, others that root deep and stabilize, and a few that thrive quietly in the understory. No single species, no single stock, can define the whole. The art is in the harmony. It’s a Collective.
The Fire Beneath the Surface
Next year, Alphavest celebrates 15 years alongside my 30— yet every year offers a time of reflection of the years of giving, growth, and gratitude. For me, that theme has found its clearest expression not in numbers, but in the forest. My Team, my valued clients—and investors and advisors at-large that may be encouraged to better outcomes from the work we do, whether directly or indirectly.
Cutting trees taught me something markets alone could not: that cycles of creation and destruction are not opposites, but partners. That resilience comes from depth, not surface. And that sometimes the most meaningful growth happens underground — unseen, unmeasured, yet vital.
Fatwood, buried in old roots, is proof of that. It’s the hidden fire, waiting to be found. In hot markets, its flame is easy to overlook. But when conditions cool — when confidence wanes and returns retreat — it’s what sustains us. It’s what we light first.
The Gift of Fatwood: Gratitude and Continuity
Fatwood reminds us that strength often hides in what’s left behind. That the work of tending — whether a portfolio, a relationship, or a piece of land — is slow, cyclical, and deeply human.
As I gather those small, resin-rich sticks, I think of all the fires they’ve yet to start — literal and metaphorical. Fires of warmth, renewal, purpose. Fires that begin not from new growth, but from what has endured.
When I walk the farm now, the forest feels lighter. The pines that remain stand taller, their trunks glinting with light. The palmettos are thriving again. There is movement, and space, and a sense of balance restored.
This place, like any well-tended portfolio, reflects years of decisions — some easy, some painful — all made with the hope of health and longevity. And perhaps that’s the essence of a perfect day: not the absence of work or worry, but the presence of right relationship — between giving and taking, holding and letting go, fire and renewal.
In the end, both the forest and the markets—and the Collective that supports our personal and professional lives—our trusted relationships, remind us that the work of stewardship is never finished. It’s an ongoing dialogue between time, trust, and attention. And if we’re lucky, when we dig deep, we find what the pines leave behind: that golden heartwood, resin-rich and ready to burn — the promise of light, even in the dampest days.
Chop, chop.
