In this episode, you'll learn how to look at your business in seasons, and use this information to show up intentionally for each one with an appropriate expectation of who you need to be, how you need to lead and where to expect productivity. Ultimately keeping you from burnout, helping you maximize your effort and keeping your energy in check to produce success in each season.
In this episode, you'll learn how to look at your business in seasons, and use this information to show up intentionally for each one with an appropriate expectation of who you need to be, how you need to lead and where to expect productivity. Ultimately keeping you from burnout, helping you maximize your effort and keeping your energy in check to produce success in each season.
Welcome to the new season of the Go For Gold podcast. I'm your host, Brittany Breen. I'm a college dropout turned corporate business and leadership mentor turned entrepreneur who helps women embrace the season they're in while evolving to create the life they want. If you're looking for a space that brings a little tough love while leaving you feeling motivated and more capable and can do tangible ways to live more boldly each day, then welcome to my show.
I am so excited you're here.
There is something that I find to be a common, I don't even want to call it a mistake because it's something that you just learn in business as you get started. But I find a lot of people that are really green in their entrepreneurship journey struggle with this or understanding this. And so I wanted to break it down today and just keep it super basic or as basic as possible.
Gonna throw some analogies in there because you know how I do things. Um, but wanted to call something out. If you are green in your career or maybe you've been in your career for a little bit, but you keep getting stuck with overwhelm throughout the year, year after year, and you can't figure out why or missing deadlines or not having a plan that actually comes to fruition, this episode is for you.
There seems to be a big buzz right now with um, you know, looking at women's hormones versus men's hormones and specifically for women's hormones dividing your month into certain seasons of your cycle so that you're productive during certain times and kind of giving yourself rest during other times.
And I'm not going to be talking about specifically hormone related rhythms in this podcast, but it's kind of the same idea that as we men or women get into business, we kind of look at our business as if it has the hormone levels of a man, which are very consistent, the exact same throughout the whole month.
Like we don't really have to pivot at all because that's how we look at our business. But if we look at our business from a year standpoint. Our cycles or I'm going to call them seasons of the business per quarter are going to be very, very different depending on which quarter we're in, depending on what we're doing during that quarter.
And I mean, there's a lot of factors that are going to influence it. And so I, I want us to kind of think about just like we would think about running our business differently throughout the month based off of our hormones as we, as a females, I want us to think about running our business differently at male or woman throughout the year.
And just looking at it in like these seasons, I'm going to speak specifically or more, most specifically to service based businesses. Although I think this applies across the board. This really would only not apply if you are in some sort of special niche. Like if you are in like, if you are a ski resort or let me think of another one or a swim lesson coach, something where your seasons look a little bit different than maybe the norm.
Um, this might be look a little. little different for you, but it's still the same concept. So you, you just take exactly what you hear in this podcast episode and kind of fit it to fit your seasons. But historically speaking, in any business I have been a part of, and I've been a part of several different kinds, there are going to be seasons in our business that we need to show up differently versus others.
So I'm going to use the world of like hairstylists or the beauty industry as an example, for this first example, in, we always say like. the, the J months are slow in this industry. So, uh, January, June, and July, we always just historically know they're slow. Now I could go on a whole backstory. When I train Sloan professionals on their business, I train them how to not have these as slow months.
You don't have to have these as slow months. So if you are a hairstylist, please break up with that lie. You are in control of your books. That's a whole nother conversation. And maybe actually I think I am going to do a podcast episode on that. If you're listening right now and you want me to do one, Let your girl know.
Okay. But, um, historically speaking, organic traffic does slow down in the beauty world in like January, even into February because the holidays and everything. And then we also slow down in like June, July when people are, you know, on summer vacation and doing their own thing. So, uh, those are seasons where we know, like if you look at that business model, your Q1 and your Q3 are going to be less.
organically productive than your Q2 and your Q4. Another example of this would be health related. So obviously you guys know I have had my health business now for five years and this is the exact same trend in, um, or I shouldn't say the exact same trend. It's actually different. But in quarter one, this is where you really are going to take advantage of a lot of, um, the organic traffic because people are trying to get healthy, uh, specifically in January.
Things do slow down a little bit in February usually, but then like March April, so Q1 into Q2, you're starting to get busy again. Summer months, everything kind of dies down again because everybody has either hit their health goals or not, and again, they're busy with their summer months, and then we kind of pick back up around back to school time, and then it kind of dies down around winter time again.
P. S. I am recording this very pregnant and he is like sitting on my lungs today. Like I didn't, I've heard of like lungs getting squished, but I feel like he just decided today's the day I'm going to sit on mom's lungs. So if you hear me wheezing and like trying to catch my breath, don't mind me. I'm just trying to be pregnant over here.
Okay. Just trying to grow life. Um, but if we are looking at our quarters all the same, kind of back to that whole mentality of like, One steady Eddie hormone cycle. We are going to set goals. And this is what I see. A lot of green entrepreneurs do, or honestly just green business leaders. This doesn't, you could be at your own job and have this mindset as well.
And it's like, if I have a goal of let's say hitting a hundred thousand dollars in my business this year, I'm just going to break that down. 25 grand per quarter. That's my goal. Let's get after it. Or, um, you might have like a client goal, like I want to see a hundred clients this year and you break it down at a steady, you know, evenly throughout quarters or maybe even months.
And this is my goal. That is not okay. Because what's going to happen is you're going to miss that deadline during certain months because. The organic traffic's not there. The, the, um, circumstances are not there for you to actually capitalize on clients and acquisition. And then in the months where you should be sprinting, you're going to lose out on a lot of opportunity because you have a too low of a goal for that specific month where you could maximize it even more because you're not making your goals based off of.
Unpossible expectations. You're going to be like, well, March, I could probably do that, but I can't do that in February or January. So I'm going to lower my goal and it's going to be 10 versus what I probably will get in March is blah, blah, blah. Do you see what I'm saying there? So you want to make sure that you're not just blanket stating your goals across the board.
for so many reasons. One of those reasons is like I just said, it's not realistic. You're going to then have your goals are going to be all over the place and you're going to kind of just be hoping and wishing each month. And one month you're gonna be like, Oh, that was awesome. It worked. And then the next month you're gonna be like, wait, why didn't that work?
What happened? And you're, it's going to be two back and forth. You want to be in control of your numbers as close as possible. Will there become surprises or are there going to be surprises in your business? Absolutely. Not every month is going to go exactly how you think it's going to go. But the goal is to get so ingrained in the data and the numbers that it's as close to to it as possible.
The other reason this is so important is because you are not a machine. You cannot run full steam ahead 12 months out of the year and expect to be able to output really what your business needs. When it needs it, right? I think that's what I see from a lot of people is we're like, we're going to just split our goals evenly down the middle and we're going to show up to work each month and we're going to put in the effort.
But the effort needed sometimes is really intense and you can't do that and sustain it. And so I see a lot of people get burnt out. We're bored or this is hard or it's just not what they signed up for and they don't have any end insight. They're like, I'm just, I have to, what, I'm going to have to do this for the next five, 20 years.
And so they don't have this, uh, sustainability to keep going. And this is, if you, if you look at your business differently, and I'm going to share with you how to look at your business instead, it really is going to help you show up. 110 percent in the times when it's all out intensity and you need to, but then also have those built in rest times when you know you could get to treat your business a little bit less and really take that time to rest and recover.
The way that I want you to start doing this is to look at your business quarters as a in seasons. Okay. Here's what I mean by that. Typically, again, this might look a little bit different depending on what industry you're in, but typically your Q1 is going to kind of be like your springtime. Your Q2 is going to be your summer.
Q3 is going to be your fall and Q4 is going to be your winter. And obviously those happen to line up with what, you know, the seasons as well. Um, but it is actually how your business is ran as well. And one thing to note before I even get into this is that you are going to have a more successful season.
If you mastered the season before that, so obviously we're in the middle of February right now. The cool thing is we are in the first quarter of the year. So if you start to apply this right now, I promise you your business is going to run that much better throughout the rest of the year. Um, you still have plenty of time to implement this.
You have, you can implement this even if it was, you know, September. But what I want to say is that with this springtime that I'm going to explain in a second, yes, it's going to be valuable for you to treat it like your spring right now, but it's going to be even more valuable next year because you will have also treated your winter like a winter and you will be ready for spring.
Okay. So it's exciting because yes, you can start implementing now, but the more that you implement it and the more that you start to rely on these seasons, it's actually going to set your next season up for success. So I'm going to actually take this kind of backwards and start with winter, but then I'll, I'll flip it back around and we'll talk about winter at the end as well.
Winter is truly when you get to hibernate. Um, it is during the holiday season. So a lot, like there's not very many people buying things unless you work in an industry that is like a gift that you would give someone. Um, then obviously people are buying your merchandise, but winter So, so again, this, this season pattern might look a little different for you if that is your you know, busy time of the year.
But winter typically, you know, whether it's um, or yeah, whatever it's going to be. It's typically when people are a little bit busy and preoccupied and they're not really interested in investing in something like a business course or, um, or actually a lot of things other than gifts because they're just so stressed out and they're just trying to focus on the holidays, right?
So winter is a really good time for you as a business owner to kind of hibernate and really work on your behind the scenes. This is when I would suggest doing things like writing your course or filming your course or creating your next thing that you're going to launch or whatever the case may be.
But really behind the scenes work where you don't really have to show up as much with the energy. You get to kind of hibernate and be. quiet and like a recluse, but you are still working. The work is just more behind the scenes, okay? So that's your winter. And then come spring, you've been working on things behind the scenes and you're ready to launch.
So spring is probably one of the most productive times in your business. It's going to take the most from you. Q1. However, you might not necessarily reap the benefits of that in the spring. So this is the one time of year where I want you to almost just mentally prepare that you're going to work your butt off.
You're not going to see any type of, well, your, your return on investment in that moment is going to be little to none. And this is where a lot of entrepreneurs actually, um, Fail, and they don't fail in Q1, they fail in Q2 because you also are going to have these pockets of extreme productivity. Um, again, it's not to say people are not buying things from you in the spring and you're not going to see some sales coming in.
However, that's going to be a lot of organic traction. And so what could happen is your spring brings you like a lot of rain, so to speak, or a lot of things that look like promise and look like success. And so the behind the scenes work and the, the grunt work stops or, or diminishes because you're like.
This is easy. I'm good to go. And then come summertime, you haven't actually planted your, your garden. And so you have nothing to actually grow. So what I want you to think about is that springtime Q1 is still going to be lucrative. You're going to be making money right now, but this is your grind time.
Like this is your time where you actually ignore the numbers, not ignore them, but don't look at the numbers or don't base your emotions off the numbers. And you just put in the work. I want you to start looking at Q1 as like your hustle season. I mean, if you can do your Q1 right, the rest of your year should still take work, but not like the constant, like, um, the, the, you shouldn't feel like you're in hustle grind mode 24 7 the rest of the year if you do your spring right.
And this is, again, springtime where you grow. Like, you are planting, you're, you're depositing, you are nurturing, you are watering, like, you are literally taking care of your garden in this season, right? And then we get into Q2, which is our summer, um, our summer model, and that's where you are still nurturing.
You're going to get some of the harvests. there. Um, but you're, this is more of like you're, you're nurturing and you're relaxing and you're enjoying. So this is different than winter because you're not hibernating. You're still out there doing your thing, but you are enjoying the benefits of your hard work.
And so there's a little bit less of, uh, you're going to feel probably just as busy. You're going to, I want you to still think of this as more of like your nurturing time. And so, or nurturing maybe isn't the right word if I'm using the analogy of summer, but more of you're like. I'm going, I, I, I planted the harvest.
It's sitting there. It's doing its thing. I'm getting some benefits from it. I'm going to go to the pool and hang out with my friends and cultivate my community and like, be kind of that rock star person that's like out and about in social life. Like, yeah, maybe that's the best comparison is like, it's not that you're hiding, but you're more resting and in your community and like nurturing relationships and loving on people that have bought from you and that kind of thing.
I hope that makes sense. I hope this analogy actually works. Um, He did it in my head. Um, and then comes your fall. And so summertime, you're still working, but again, you're not working as hard. This is going to be one of those seasons where you get to kind of let your foot off the gas ever so slightly. And let me just say this again, these seasons only work if you put in the work in the season beforehand.
I know I just said that, but I want to reiterate that a lot of people, what happens to a lot of business owners is springtime is almost a free for all like it again. Meaning if you are putting in a little bit of effort, you're going to get a return on your investment. But then you're going to get to summertime where you actually needed to invest.
And if you didn't, it's going to be crickets. And for a lot of business owners, this is where you're not as, you're not, um, you're not getting as much like solid success, tangible success, I should say, should say. And so you do what. the, the norm of the market is doing too and you kind of take your foot off the gas and you go, you know, you're spending more time on, on vacations and you're going to hang out with your friends more and you're really ignoring your business and you don't even want to face your business because it's not producing for you and it was so much easier in the spring, but you don't have anything going on in summer and now you resent your business and now you're wondering if you should have even started this business in the first place when really, if you had just been a little bit more tight shipped in your spring.
You could be doing those exact same things and enjoying your summer, but you didn't put in the, the, the, um, initial investment again. Hopefully this analogy is all making sense. So springtime is 24 7 hustle. You are literally in the grind. You're saying no to everything else. Summertime. If you did your spring, right.
Is you getting to enjoy your summer, literally, like literally, and I'm still working behind the scenes, but reaping some of that benefit. And then if you do that right, and you're nurturing your community, and you're loving on your clients, and you're, you're, you know, putting things back into the business, then your fall is when you really get to harvest.
This is when I think it's a great time for a launch. So, um. Again, depending on what business you're in, you could also look at your summer as like, again, like I said, like your social time where you're loving on people, you're, you're almost harvesting from the spring too, but you're, this is your time to like nurture people so that when you launch whatever next is in your business in the fall, you've already loved on people and created trust and value with your community.
So that when you do launch, you have people ready to buy from you. And so fall can be a very lucrative time. If you play your social card right in the summertime to harvest, um, and, and, and launch something. And again, it's, it's going to be one of your higher number quarters. So when you're thinking about goal setting, I really.
Again, for most markets, if you have questions about this for your specific niche or industry, let me know. Okay. But for your, for the most part, you're going to be making most of your profit in Q1 and most of your profit in Q3. And even when you're, when you're mapping out your year and your goals, like something that I like to do for myself, and it doesn't always work out this way, but it has a couple of my years.
I like to let myself off the hook in the winter time too, from like, A productivity, um, like dollar amount or like acquisition amount, um, and give myself, you know, November and December off of having to make money. Of course I still make money during those months, but it's not like what I've seen happen to a lot of business owners.
And I think honestly this probably happened to my, I'd have to like think about what, what year this has happened in. So I'm sure it's happened to me as well. But what happens a lot of times is. We have these goals, and we just keep missing them and missing them and missing them because we haven't treated our business like seasons, we've just treated it with one blanket, whatever, and then we still haven't hit our goal by November, and now we've got nothing but stress in November and December to try to hit our goals.
And we're like, what the heck? I just want to enjoy the holidays. I'm exhausted. I can't do this. And now you can't even do your winter season, right? Because you are just trying to make up from what you didn't hit in Q1, Q2, and Q3. So you're not even giving yourself the space or the functionality to actually do what the winter season is supposed to be.
And that is behind the scenes work, getting ready for your spring. Like, you can't even get ready for your spring because you're so overwhelmed with trying to still make up for your lost year, right? So that's why, again, it's so important to make sure that you're doing, you're, you're, you're, you have realistic expectations, um, or I should say intentional expectations for each quarter, depending on, uh, you know, what it's going to be for you.
So for me personally, my biggest target goals or like season goals are Q1 and Q3 because that sets me up to enjoy my summer and enjoy, it sets me up to enjoy my holiday season too, not speaking in analogies. So fall is a beautiful time to launch something. It's definitely when people are getting back into structure and routine.
They want whatever area of their life they're trying to improve and your product is going to help them do that. They want to, um, kind of get back on track after the summertime, specifically before the holidays. So that's what you're going to be doing in the fall. It's kind of harvesting. And then hopefully you've hit most of your goals by that fall.
That's kind of your target is that by Q3. A lot of your major goals have been hit already for the year and now you're getting into your winter season. You can feel really good about hibernating and resting and recovering while still doing some of the more like behind the scenes creative stuff and really mapping out what the upcoming year is going to look like.
Now, of course, this is way easier said than done, but if you can start to put even like a, a, a taste of this into your business model, it is going to pay you back tenfold. Again, the purpose of this is to give yourself seasons of rest where you can recover and you're not going 24 seven all the time and burning out.
It's also to take advantage of the market when it is hot and not have to try to, to put like, um, fish from an empty lake when it's not, um, I've, I've used this. GA lot of times with my coaches before about like a pond, and I guess I can use the analogy right now too, I don't know if I've put this in a podcast episode before, but when we first get into business, we, it's basically us, you know, before we built rapport, before we built reputation, et cetera, we're, we kind of are going to this empty, manmade pond and trying to fish from it with no fish in there.
And we're like, why is no one biting? Like, what is going on here? But, um. What we do through relationship building and through nurturing and through adding value on our social media platforms and whatnot, is it's us like putting in fish each day into our pond, which is potential leads. And then by the time we've nurtured them and we fed them and they trust the environment and whatnot, we then get to go fish.
That sounds kind of morbid now that I think about it, because it's not like we're trying to eat our, our, uh, are people that trust us, but like, you get what I'm saying here. We're going in, we're, we're fishing to see if they are, you know, a lead that want to turn into, um, why am I going to say our dinner?
That's so bad. You know, you know what I'm saying here, the non morbid version of that. Um, I guess that's what looking at your year this way is doing too. It's like literally preparing this man made pond for the perfect environment so that when you do go fish, you have something to actually fish from and you're not trying to, um, you know, trying to get, This is the same like hair hair clients in January when you didn't prepare for it because people are typically not like spending their money on their hair if they didn't plan for it if they just got done with the holidays or People are typically not starting their health journey at the beginning of December Just because you're a health coach and you didn't hit your goal for the year And now you need to make money in December and you're freaking out because no one's buying and you're like, why isn't this working?
Nobody's buying. Well, of course, they're not you didn't fill your pond first or you didn't make sure that you had the Reservoir that you needed of supplies or whatever Um, i i i in time for the, the famine, essentially. So many analogies. I've been reading my Bible every day and, um, have been reading in Exodus as they're, um, uh, you know, in Egypt.
And obviously Joseph prepares, you know, with the seven years of, um, harvest, he prepares for the seven years of famine. And I guess we can look at our business the same way too, not to say that we're going to have a famine, but there are going to be highs and lows in our business. So why would we expect us to make the same dollar amount or profit or revenue in every single month of the year when we know we're going to have these, these times where it's plentiful and fruitful.
And then these times when it's a little bit less or, or completely dead. And that's my other point. I guess I, again, all these analogies, um, with the springtime is that it's basically us treating our Q1 as just another quarter and then hopping on over to summer is kind of like treating the, the feast years before the famine as just like, yeah, let's just Eat whatever is available.
Let's just ingest whatever's here and we're good to go. And then the famine comes and we're like, man, I should have saved some of that, or I should have harvested more and prepared for this famine time. So many business owners do not prepare for the time where it's going to be slower by taking advantage of the, um, you know, increased time.
So again, another way to look at it. Uh, make sure that you are harvesting as much as you can during those seasons and not getting lazy. And if you are doing this kind of, this dance with productivity and then recover time and social time and hibernation time and whatnot, you're going to have the energy source that you need in order to actually.
Be who you need to be as a business owner in each quarter. Speaking of energy, running your business with this kind of a thought process or this kind of a plan, it makes sense from a tangible side of things or logical or like, you know, data driven side of things. But maybe even more importantly than that, It makes sense from an energy standpoint.
Again, we talked a little bit ago about how people run their business the same throughout the year, and it really is the equation for burnout. And now they're burnt out. They've been putting all this time, energy resources into something and they're frustrated. And what happens to your energy levels when you're frustrated?
They take not only do you not have the actual physical like emotional energy to do the things that you need to do, but you can just feel the negativity that comes off of someone that's, uh, you know, frustrated in their business and what I would say is that sometimes you can't even feel it like when you are in that burnt out stage.
Of your business and maybe you're not even burnt out. Maybe you're just not getting the traction that you thought you would and you're kind of in that like, woe is me pity. This is hard. Like your victim mentality. You might be able to actually hide that from the world, from your clients, from the people that have spent money and invested with you.
But you can't lie to the universe. There is the law of what you put into something you will get back. I mean, that is biblical even right? Yeah. And so you can't escape that. So even if you're showing up and you're, you're being productive, but you have this low energy frequency and you're hiding it from everyone and you think you're so okay, because no one knows you are still going to be putting that energy into your business and you're going to be getting it back.
And when people are spending, you know. whatever, a dollar with you. It doesn't matter what amount they're spending on you. But when they're spending money on you, they're expecting you to hold yourself to a higher standard where you truly don't get to have bad days. And again, that doesn't need to be perfect 24 7.
You're human. But it does mean you need to set yourself up for success from the beginning of the year to make sure that what you're inputting is what you're Wanting to output and then wanting to return in, in, in, or receive in return in closing. If you hear nothing else in this episode other than this, it's to not treat your business as if all months are the same, all seasons are the same, all quarters are the same and set your, your goals up accordingly.
And you want to do the opposite and really look at the months ahead, the quarters ahead and realize what factors are going to influence. Traffic acquisition, et cetera. What factors are going to maybe make certain months more productive versus not and really plan accordingly and get rid of breakup with this mentality of creating all goals just the same throughout the months.
And again, back to the beginning of this. This is really, I mean, I kind of want to do a podcast episode on this, although I have someone in mind that I want to interview for it, um, but really this, this whole thought process has come from, you know, all of the research being done now around women's hormones and how there's different times of the month that you should show up to your, your job, your business life, just differently, depending on where your hormone levels are.
And I'm like that, yeah. That makes so much sense. It's actually, I love learning about that right now. But, but that's also how our business just is. Like, I think that the cool thing about how God created nature is there's so many different patterns that are repeated throughout. And I think this is one of those pattern things too.
So this is a fascinating way to look at it. Um, but I want to challenge you or empower you to start looking at your business. way. And maybe if you've already set your goals for this year, this could be for your business. This could also be for your personal. Maybe it's time to sit down and rewrite them so that they make a little bit more sense so that you can start having a rhythm and a flow to how your year is going to go.
And you can kind of break up with the overwhelm of really aggressive months that you came out of nowhere and really high months that came out of nowhere and then really low months that came out of nowhere. And you just feeling like you're, um, you know, getting catapulted all around to the water. or in the storm, like trying to figure it all out.
Like, let's just prepare for the storm, be ready for the storm and then be ready for those really sunshiny days as well. As always, I want to know what you thought of this episode. So if you will do me a huge favor after you're done listening to it, hop over to the DMs, let me know your thoughts even better, if you liked it and you want to share your thoughts on it as well, or this is resonating with you, throw it up on your stories and then of course, the biggest gift of all you could ever give me is a review over on whatever platform you're listening to it.
So. I invite you to do that as well. I hope you have had an amazing start to the new year and wish nothing but even more success in the months to come.