Skip to main content

Business Seasons

 


Just as a farmer knows that their business is affected by the change of seasons, so are our businesses.

Unlike a normal season that typically lasts about three months, each business season can last many years or on average about 10 years.

If you don't understand how this business season will really affect your business you could be caught off guard and this can have a very negative effect on the health and the survival of your business.

Let's start talking about Spring. This is the time when the farmer starts to sow the seeds. We are starting to plant ideas and they start to grow. You've survived the Winter and now you're beginning a totally new economic cycle planting the seeds and maybe even looking for other revenue sources. We may even possibly recruit new talent to help us grow. Generally, at this point, we plan and map out our focus for the succeeding years. Business Spring usually lasts many years. You need to give these ideas time to develop.

Then after Spring, here comes Summer. This is the time to maximize our revenue in our profits. You can feel that the market is stronger and people are happily spending money this time. During the Summer season, your business should be well-established and your revenue streams must be stable with a pretty good healthy base. This is the time where you want to use your profits that you've gained and invest in your business and possibly expand if that's something that you're even considering.

If you're not really experienced with business Summer, you might think that this is going to last forever. Lots of businesses during the summer months are going to spend lots of money and not worry about saving money because the money keeps rolling in. But a farmer knows that seasons change. Summer is not going to last forever. That's why a smart business owner knows not to be spending a lot during this time.

Then now we're in the season of Fall. Fall arrives and businesses slowly begins to slow down. Sometimes it's going so slow we don't even know if we're not really paying attention. At the end of Summer and the beginning of Fall, competitors start to pop out of nowhere. They're coming into the game late, but they start coming in all over the place and many businesses really start to hit the panic button because they see their business starting to slow down and there are more competitors out there. Those business owners who don't have a season plan in place often start competing on price alone because there's just so many new competitors in the marketplace and they don't have a plan to deal with it. This is not the way to ensure that you're going to survive the next season.

What we really need to focus on is if you really executed your seasonal plan correctly by the time Winter arrives. You're actually in a pretty good shape because you have cash that you saved when business was good. Competition for customers isn't as fierce because they were just living off the low-hanging fruit when business was good when most businesses out there didn't even have to think about it. They just picked up everything that you could get to.

But now that business is no longer there, they're having a tough time surviving running into cash flow issues. However, because you planned out your business for the next season, you're in a position to take advantage of these really good deals that are now out there.

It's a good time to buy equipment when there's not so much demand and you can get a really good price. It's also a time to grow by acquisition. You can purchase equipment from those competitors that are having a hard time surviving now, pennies on the dollar. You can look at buying their customers or keeping any good employees that they have. And you can even get a great deal by just offering them a job with a steady paycheck and just absorb their business as well.

Now, Winter doesn't last forever. You start to begin to plan for Spring so you can get a jump on your competitors that did survive. And because you've been proactive, you now have a plan going into Spring. You're in a position to take advantage of the Summer growth cycle to scale up your business.

So, how well are you following these four seasons of business? Has it put you in a strong position?

If you want to learn more, schedule a free strategy session with me and learn what you need to do to take advantage of these four seasons in your business.
Book a free Strategy Session
Labels:
Location: Jacksonville, FL, USA

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Are Your Employees Keeping Up With Your Growth?

There is one challenge that I see that keeps popping up for organizations that hold them and their teams back from achieving more. Are your employees having a hard time keeping up with how rapidly your business is growing? If your team is struggling to handle the capacity of work that comes from scaling your business, I'm going to suggest to you a few strategies to help them to keep pace with your organizational growth. If you've noticed that projects seem to be falling through the cracks, the more work that your business has, this is a great thing for your business but not so good with the things that are falling through the cracks, right? I suggest to don't be too hard on your employees because maybe it might just be very hard and difficult to adjust to the growth of the heavier capacity of the work that they now have. Instead of cracking down on them, you need to focus on being heavy on accountability. If your employees are missing deadlines or aren't completing ...
Post a Comment
Read more

5 Things You Need To Know To Take Your Business To The Next Level

  One of my favorite things I help business owners with is guiding them to turn their dreams into reality. Big dreams and goals are scary and that's why many people don't pursue them. What stops most of us is that we don't know where to begin. Let us start with a simple formula... Dream x Goals x Plan x Action = Success What is that multiplier?  It's our learning.  What we learn...helps us dream. But now we have to ask ourselves what do we need to learn to turn that dream into a goal? Or our goal into a plan? Or what do we need to learn to take our plan into action? In business, we will grow to our level of incompetency and stop.  Let's take a look at the process by which learning actually happens. The whole process of learning is, well, let's start with timing - how far ahead do you need to learn something? Do you need to learn it the day before you need it?  No, you need to be learning stuff at least a year prior to needing it. You need to learn stuff at leas...
Post a Comment
Read more

Creating An Automatic Business

  How do you create an automatic business that runs without you? This is not just theory. It comes from guidance, a system, and a commitment from the business owner that they want to work on it. Let's get started with the definition of a Business according to ActionCOACH.  It is a commercial profitable enterprise that works without you - the business owner. You see, when I work with my clients, I get them to just work on one of these areas. Is it a commercial enterprise? Or is it a profitable enterprise that works without you? See, I meet lots of entrepreneurs that want to start, maybe, one, two, or three businesses, and guess what? They all have the same problems. Because the fundamentals are not set up correctly. Commercial means that you're selling something that people value or something that they want to buy. Profitable means that you understand enough about your business finances that you could possibly increase your profits without even increasing your revenue or even ...
Post a Comment
Read more