Starting a business is not as glamorous as the Dragons Den and Shark Tank would suggest. There is alot of grunt work involved before you get to the stage of producing a new product or service.

I'm currently involved in some grunt work. I am pruning my grape vines before the buds emerge. There is alot of hand pruning followed by taping the vine to the trellis. It is a cold, wet and windy day. I have my rain suit on and am getting ready to do another session of pruning.

To call it grunt work is a bit of a misnomer. The pruning I'm doing now determines the fate of the vine for the rest of the summer. It involves alot of rapid fire spatial decision making using several heuristics such as cutting back as much of the bottom growth as I can, cut the tops off after 10-12 buds, create a spur prune instead of a cane prune when I have lots of branches coming off the cane, keep at least two main trunks and sometimes three, cut away canes pointing into the center of the row that might be hard to train, cut the plastic ties off the bottom so I don't constrict this years growth. These are some of my main rules of thumb.

Success in pruning is about getting the grunt work done as efficiently as you can while appreciating the importance of doing it. The same is true in most successful businesses.