088: Three Types of Seasons Your Business Could Have This Year

Giving ‘title’ to the type of year you intend to have can be so powerful to help you create the focus your business needs to achieve your goals. By labelling it a ‘season’, this can help you follow through on your strategies and stay the course.

By listening [and taking notes], you’ll learn:

• How to grow your business in multiple ways, not just by focusing on revenue
• How different ‘seasons’ operate and why this is a great thing
• Things to look out for depending what season you’re in

Enjoy!

For your Complimentary Consultation click here or visit: shannonstone.com.au/consult

Resources:

• Website
• Facebook
• Facebook Group
• LinkedIn 
• Instagram

If you’d like to work together with me as your 1:1 business and marketing consultant, book a call here.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:05

Have you noticed so much business and marketing content out there is so abstract and airy fairy? Like what they're saying sounds good, but what do you actually need to do? That's where the Good Marketing Good Business Podcast comes in. This is where I share practical strategies to help you grow your service-based business. And in case we haven't met yet, I'm Shannon Stone, award-winning business and marketing consultant. And for the last decade or so, I've been diving in deep with small business owners, helping them to make more sales and get more done in less time. And today's episode is no different. Enjoy.

The Growth Year

The Maintenance Year

The Re-Build Year

Action Step

SPEAKER_00 0:42

Hey guys, welcome to the podcast. Super excited that you are here, jumping on and listening. First and foremost, I want to say happy 2026. I hope you had an amazing festive season. I definitely did. It was very well rested. I went away without my laptop, which I think is very telling for a business owner. If you go somewhere without your laptop, you really mean rest. And it's something I'm learning to do. Can definitely work hard. I don't know about the rest part. Something I'm really trying intentionally to get better at. But I definitely felt rested after the fact. So I definitely was able to flex those skills a little bit more. But I hope you're very excited for the year ahead. This episode today, three types of seasons your business could have this year, is something that I think can really help you, whether you've set your plans and your strategies and goals for this year already. And even if you haven't, I think it can be really helpful too. Why I love this thing about seasons, I talk about it all the time, and I think it's a really good way to create containment over what we do. It's funny how just sometimes words, simple little words or simple little labels, healthy labels, can put like create relief, put a pep in our step. And I know this because when I talk to people about seasons, like, oh, it's a season of this or it's a season of that, or just describing their business. And I just say, see this as a season, it's going to be, and then, but just the word season really helps create relief, creates a sense of focus, it puts intention on what they're doing, and I think it makes it so much easier for the strategies and the action plans and the follow-through to actually occur. So I think it's really helpful. We'll talk about three different ones, which is the growth year, the second is a season of the maintenance year, and the third is a rebuild year. So three different ones, but after working with businesses for the last 10 years, I usually find they're in one of these three. But if you happen to have a variation, totally go for it. But yes, this idea of giving the title of a season to the type of year you want to have is really, really powerful. So how do you choose what type of season? Because default, business owners are just going to say, Well, we just want to grow. We just want to grow our business. And we can grow our businesses actually in multiple ways, and we'll talk about that. But choosing the season, I find it's really good on the past, present, future type paradigm. So, where have you been in the past? Where do you want to go in the future? And what does that vision look like? And lastly, here's what we'll do this year to support that. So that's the present piece. You know, just wanting to achieve your goal doesn't happen because you say you want it to happen. There's a lot that actually goes into that. And saying, okay, it's going to be a season of this, it helps to create that space for you for that year ahead. So let's jump into the first one, and that's the growth year. So in a growth year, and I am focusing this on revenue, there's actually two components to a growth year. The first is seeding, and the second is harvesting. So this whole kind of concept of farming is it's always often talked about in business. It translates really, really well, and for good reason, because to grow, to take on more clients, to grow your revenue, grow your profit, there's many ways to do that, but often you have to plant seeds that you later harvest. Like I said, it doesn't just happen because you said you want it to happen. How are we actually going to do that? Now, your business has been ticking along for some time. So you don't always have to start with seeding. And what I often find when clients come to me, I'm looking for what are the things we can harvest right now? What are the things that where we can start pulling up these crops? For some people, they've got lots of opportunities they haven't fully embraced, they've got untapped databases, they've got even just a business whose marketing isn't on point. If you create a really solid marketing plan, something fresh, something different, something with strategy included in it, it just lands so much easier and starts converting so much better. So you could still be having done marketing or be doing marketing in your business, but maybe you can harvest a lot sooner. So I'm always looking for what are the ways that we can kind of pull up some crops now. But there is always something to be said for well, you also need to be planting seeds because there's that lagging effect that happens. You know, you need to get known by the right people in the right places, say the right things so that they trust you. And so it's important for you to know that there are these two components to a growth year. There is the seeding, and then there's also the harvesting as well. The order that it comes in is dependent on your business. But I've got some questions for you to ask if you want to have a growth year. So the first is what are we growing specifically? So you really want to quantify what that actually looks like. The next is what am I willing to do to see this growth happen? I'm always looking for how far are we stretching or how far, what are we working with? Like for some people, they've got a certain budget they're working with, some people are willing to just do different things or certain things or lots of things or not many things. What are you willing to do to see this growth happen? And it would be great if you got really specific on that. I'm willing to pick up the phone, I'm willing to run webinars, I'm willing to blah, blah, blah, like whatever the things are. The next is what am I willing to let go of in order to see this growth? That's a really good one because sometimes we need to let go of certain things. This is where the season title really helps as well. For some people, they're willing to let go of their evenings for this season because they're willing to work more. It could be all sorts of different things. Maybe you're willing to let go of perfectionism and allow things to be messier for the sake of growing. We'll talk about some of this a bit more because it doesn't mean business is not going to be on brand or gonna crumble in any kind of way, but what are you willing to let go of? And the last question: at what speed do you want to grow to achieve this? That can be really important because that helps to dictate so much, like the strategies and everything that you do. But depending on how aggressive your goal is, or how aggressive the speed at which you want to achieve that goal, the time frame, that could really change your plans, your strategies, your how how much you're willing to work, how many team members you're willing to engage in on this. So, what speed are you willing to grow to achieve this? Two things to keep in mind for someone who wants to have a growth year. The first is you have to communicate your growth plans with your team. They're involved in one way or another. And so it's important for you and them to understand what the expectations are as you're going through this year. You may need to expand their skill set. So there might be more training required for them, or maybe there's additional responsibilities that or shifts in responsibilities. Maybe you're used to doing the client contact, even just some of the time, but you're deciding now that you know what, this is not a task that we that I as the business owner do anymore or want to do anymore in the future. So I need to really get that over to the team and have them do it. So you really want to communicate this with your team that we want to have a growth year. Here's the expectations, here's what's acceptable, what's not acceptable. Like you might say, we absolutely are not wavering on our client delivery. That's the most important. And we also don't want to be trying this hard to take on new clients and then lose them. So we really want to focus on that client retention as well. They're our main focuses where we can kind of not drop the ball, but just kind of ease a little bit is maybe on the systems, maybe on some other areas of the business that you kind of just like delay attending to for a little bit, or you just know that you know what, this is what's acceptable, this is what not acceptable. So thinking this through, talking to your team about it, just really getting them on board because they're a big part of this as well. And how will you reward your team for helping to facilitate this growth? I think if they're helping to contribute to this, I think people can be really motivated by rewards. So making some type of reward system, whatever that might look like for you and your team. The other thing to keep in mind is depending how you grow this year, and that's why we have those really good questions, which PS, there is a companion article for every episode. You'll find it over on LinkedIn. It's titled the exact same as the episode. Can be a really nice, handy way to get the questions and get almost like a very concise written version of the podcast. But back to what we were talking about is depending how you've answered those questions and how your business will grow this year, there could be a bit of a cleanup required later on, or a bit of an integration phase required later on after the growth happens. So you might go full steam head taking on all these new clients and everything, but at some point in time you need to really improve that onboarding process, or you really need to attend to some of the things that you were kind of okay with not being as perfect and running as smoothly. But at some point in time, you're probably gonna have to attend to those. Like maybe part of your plan for growing was engaging an outsourced marketing team, but the way you really want to run your business is to have an in-house marketing team. So maybe it would be okay for a certain period to outsource it, get some campaigns running, just figure out what actually does work, and then eventually you might shift that back in-house once things are all worked out as well. It's got to be very specific to you and how you want your business to run. So that's the first, that's the growth year, and there is no wrong way to grow. Like if there is that big cleanup required, that is perfectly okay. Don't think you've grown the wrong way. There is no wrong way to do it. Just be aware that there could be a cleanup or integration phase later on. The second year or the second season you could have is the maintenance year or the refinement year. So some years, just those significant growth, revenue growth years are just not the goal. I had a client who came to me and she said, Shannon, like, I don't even think she used the word grow, but she told like as we're going through the process, she's earning 1.5 million a year. Business is doing well, but she just said, you know what, Shannon? It's like she didn't really know what she needed the help with, but she just knew she needed help. Business was doing well, had a great team, but she was working 60, 70 hours a week and extremely burnt out. And this is completely unsustainable for anyone, it doesn't matter who you are. So for her, she said, I don't care. Like if we can maintain the 1.5, that's great. But the rest of it, something the rest of it's got to change. I'm working too much, I'm always helping out the team, making sure the deadlines are being met, checking things. But ultimately, she was working through burnout, and that's just not sustainable for anyone. So that's a really good example of someone who needs a maintenance or a refinement year. We want to hold that revenue, which is important. You still run a business here, but we need to change some other things within that. So a year like this, it's not a year where you do nothing at all. It's a year that you can spend streamlining things in your business. And you can actually find a really good byproduct of a maintenance year is that you become more profitable because you slow down to look at the things in your business instead of just running all the time. Like I find people are running in two ways. They're running to keep up with the workload, keep all the clients happy and things like that. And they're also running to take on more clients, be in that sales support or acquiring the clients, doing networking, whatever it is that helps them to generate those clients. But growing your business is an array of all sorts of different things. It's not just those front-end things. So when you do slow down and you look at, okay, how can we find more profit in our packages? How can we spend less time, still maintain the quality with our clients, but less time per client because that's one way to have your team spend yet less time on each client project and things like that. That could be a way for you to still charge the same amount, the value is still amount, the outcome, the results for the clients are still the same, but you guys are saving internally because you're not spending as much time on that particular client that can make room for new clients. So it does allow you to create more profit. That's why I said it's growing in a different way, but it comes because you started looking at different things. Like in a year like this, and it is worthy of its own whole conversation. You know, you can be looking at the reports, you can be looking at client retention, you can be looking at so many areas that are the small but mighty tweets that do help your business to grow. Unfortunately, it's your it's often come around out of like angst, out of someone in burnout, out of like almost like not even really choosing. It's like forced upon them. But whatever it takes sometimes, as long as we listen and then start to follow through. So a few questions to ask for those wanting to have a maintenance or refinement year. So the first is how do I really want business to look? Bit of a qualitative one, but you know, working 60 hours a week and being the only one generating maybe the client interest, and I'm just kind of running through what that particular client was doing, jumping on the tools all the time. It's too many things. The work work she's a part of, the mental load, the emotional toll, no wonder, you know, burnout is at play. So, how do I want business to really look? The next is what can stay the same versus what needs to change. So, revenue, we want that to stay the same, but we want this list of things to change, and you know, the world is your oyster, like dictate what you want business to look like. If you want your team to work from home three days a week, like write that in. Like it's literally anything you want it to look like. The last question is as the business owner, what needs to change for me in order for the business to be sustainable and fulfilling? So a bit of a personal one for the business owner. You need to have that personal inquiry and apply it to the business. Like, what needs to change for things to be sustainable for you and fulfilling for you? If you want your business to be around in the next five, 10 years, and I guess I want to say, like, what is your exit plan and things? You don't have to almost like another conversation, but however long you want your business to be around, like what needs to be at play in order for your business to be sustainable and fulfilling? And you could ask this question every single year because it does change, but for the time being, what does that need to look like? Because that will take you into the next year as well. So, two things to keep in mind for those having a maintenance or a refinement year. The first is this is business growth in a new way, and I love this because it's almost like business owner maturity to really say out loud the season we are having this year is a maintenance year, a refinement year. This is the year where we're going to we're not gonna solely focus on revenue growth, we're going to focus on making our business run really smoothly because that is much more satisfying than the 60 plus hours to earn all the monies. But like I said, you will grow in a different way, and there can be beautiful byproducts that do make your business more profitable. So that is what I want you to keep in mind. The next thing I want you to keep in mind is if you have spent many years at hand focusing on constantly growing all the time, it can be really easy to get FOMO, fear of missing out when you're not focusing on client acquisition all the time, sales all the time, like shifting your focus into something else can be really hard. But what often happens is it's really easy to slip back into old ways. So, what I'm saying here is you need to be so clear on this is the year that you're having, and that's why I think labeling seasons help us to stick with it because if you don't, you just you just like oh, let's work on XYZ this year. These are our three, four really big projects, but you don't give it a season, you don't give it a name. It can be so easy to be like, oh yeah, that's not working. Cash flow is a little bit tighter this month, we need to focus on this. It's very easy to deviate. That's not to say that you don't still run your business, like you've still got to keep things ticking along, and you business is a little or quite like a dance and a bit of a play it by ear type thing. If things are dipping, what are you gonna do about it? Like, depending on lots of things, like the health of your business and the financial position, that'll kind of dictate and even the seasonality of your business, certain times a year, perform differently for different industries and businesses, but still run your business the way it needs to be run. But giving it this season and coming back to your decision of this is the year we're having is really important because people will work in burnout for years on end. They will just suck up the fact that you know what, I just work 60 hours a week and that's just normal. Like that's that's what I'm so good at. Like, oh my god, business owners are so good at working. Like, it's like I said at the start, I am learning how to rest. Like, I think that's the craziest thing that someone has to learn how to rest, but it's who we are, like these types of things. Working is fun for us, it's very innate for us, but unfortunately, it can lead to burnout and and it can lead to a year of maintenance, which is actually, I think, one of my most favorite type of seasons. Okay, the last type of season your business could choose to have this year is the rebuild or the restructuring year. So for some people, something big can happen, and it could be personal, could be business, and things just really need to change. For some people, they may have been running their business still very analog y, and still in 2026, that very much happens. Invoices are written on those slips of paper, and lots of analog pieces are still in existence for so many businesses. So moving completely online and going digital is still something a lot of people need to do, and even you can run a business and use these pieces of the internet, and almost still like just being just because you're doing things online or there are some automations, like it's almost like there's an analog that occurs online. Like, are you manually sending invoices online or using an accounting system? So for some people, they do need to really make that shift. Other big things that can Happen is in order for like maybe the last few years have been screaming at you that things are really slowing down, and it's because you're not remaining competitive, and your business like absolutely has to make some changes, like maybe with the real move into the market of AI, like things are just really starting to hit your business and hit your business hard. And if you don't start to really pay attention and become more innovative, uh adopt some of these things, whatever the changes need to be, this might be the time. I say might, but almost saying like this is the time if you're seeing these things impact your business, whatever it is, economy, industry, technology, like you really got to make some changes yesterday, kind of thing. So for the person and the business owner experiencing that, you may spend this year really focusing on that and sharpening your business in that way and fine-toothing your business in that way. You still run your business, you still take care of your clients, your team, but this season allows you to say we need to restructure some things that are going on to make sure that we are still around in many years to come. Another big thing that could happen is the business owner just wants to move out of client delivery. They're still scratching their head, wondering, why am I even doing this? Like, why am I on the tools? Why am I the one to talk to the clients all the time? Even though you might love that stuff. Maybe even the business owners got some seasons of focusing on their kids coming up and they want to do that more, or they're wanting to retire or semi-retire. So, whatever the reasons, it's important to you're probably aware of those seasons. You just don't know how to translate it into the business. So I think when you're aware of what is happening, that's why you can give a title like a season to say, yeah, okay, we've got to make these changes. We are doing a bit of a restructuring year. So if that is you, a few questions to ask is what needs to change versus what needs to stay the same. The next question is how can I create a plan that steadily supports the change? So this is not like about, you know, one small change in the business. Often it's like we kind of need to fine-tooth, go through a lot of things in the business. So you want to create a plan, and maybe a project manager can be really helpful with that as well, which is takes me to the next question. But who do I need to support us through this? So is it that you need a project manager? Is it that you need some particular people with certain skill sets? Like if it's if it is going digital, like it is, it actually probably is not in your zone of genius, and that's why you haven't done it for up until now. So someone or some business to help you to make that transition, contractors, businesses, people in those with those skills, who are the people that can help support you through this. So a couple of things to keep in mind when you are going through a year of change is you want to be ultra mindful of your cash flow because any decisions you make can have this flow-on effect. And I think it's always helpful to know when those impacts are coming rather than be blindsided by them. So I think staying very close to your cash flow in a year of change is important. Also, just almost like pacing yourself and making phases for certain changes so that you can soften the change and that integration. Like I I often don't bring up, I guess, like the topical things that are happening in the news, but there was the big optus, I think they've had a few of them, the big optus outages, and a couple of people actually did pass away because they weren't able to dial triple zero. And what I did here, and like take it not as fact, but I'm just using this as like a corresponding kind of example. But what I did here is that the way Optus runs their business is they will try to do things really quickly and often don't test things as many times or in a micro space as they should. I I've got a close person that works for Telstra, who's the other telecommunications, and they he was saying, you know, at Telstra, we like we're we're slow, but we're slow on purpose, and we will do things a lot more. We will test and we'll test and we'll test way too many times. Whereas what could have gone wrong for Optus in that case is that they just were moving too quickly, and it's sad seeing you know the implications of certain decisions come through, especially something as extreme as people losing their lives over not being able to contact emergency services. But that is like obviously the absolute most extreme case, but I share it as a correlation, correlating example or story for you to just see okay, there can be very unintended problems that come up because of certain changes, and like not to scare you in any kind of way, but as small business owners, kind of bringing it back down to that, just I want to lower the heartache for you. So if you kind of do it at the pace that's relevant to you, you explore what could the potential issues be, are there any contingencies we can have in place? This is why a project manager can be really helpful for all of this. And it would depend on the changes, you'd almost want a strategist to help you too, because depending on what those changes are, it can impact your cash flow, it can impact your ability to kind of run the business that the good parts of the business that have been working up until now. So sometimes it's like the marketing and and your sales pieces that need to be accommodated as well. So I do want you to keep in mind staying very close to your cash flow and also just being uh aware of the impact the decisions might make as well. Similar to the last phase, you know, focusing on that end goal while you're doing this, I think that can be really helpful to carry you through these changes. So they're the three different seasons I typically see business owners have each year. And I think it can be really helpful because like you can just start the year saying, these are our goals, here's our plans, our strategies, our things that we're going to do. But this almost like wraps it up all together. And you know, instead of just kind of picking up projects of saying, okay, we need a new website or we need this or we need that, it's like this almost like brings you back to the intention of it, brings you back to almost like cross-checking, oh, but is this fulfilling our overall need for this type of season? So these are some of the reasons why I'd love to give a title and a season to the type of year you want to have. So very much a deep dive, but hopefully you found this helpful and useful. I would love to know whether you share it with me or not, and this is the action step for this episode, is to decide what type of season will your business have this year. Is it a growth year? Is it a maintenance or refinement year? Or is it a year of change where you're rebuilding and restructuring? Think if you can just decide one of those three, or something a bit more relevant to you. It can help carry you through the year, make it a little bit more easier. Feel like if you say, okay, it is that season, it is a season where I'm going to be working harder or working more, whatever it is. It can help you to get through it. So I hope you found that helpful. I'm wishing you the absolute best 2026. And if you need anything, always reach out. My email is Shannon at shannonstone.com.au and I hope you have an amazing week. I'll chat to you soon.

SPEAKER_01 31:23

Hey, thanks for listening. If you found this episode useful, I'd love for you to send it to a friend. The best podcasts I have found have all been recommended to me. If you can spread the word by sharing this episode, I can spend more time helping you by creating episodes just like this one. Send it, text it, tell somebody about it, whatever you need to do. The more you spread the word, the more I can focus on creating needle moving episodes to help you and your friends.