Seasons, Systems, and Structure

Welcome to The Evolved Entrepreneur, a weekly newsletter where I share practical tips to go from “drowning in work” to OWNING your business and life.

Most entrepreneurs are afraid of slow seasons. The great ones take advantage of it.

Like the universe, your business operates in seasons and natural cycles.

You can either swim upstream against the flow… or ride along with it.

While there’s no right or wrong way to do this, my experience has been that business and life were always easier and more enjoyable when I flowed with seasons and cycles.

I’m going to share with you how I turn my slow seasons into a catapult for momentum and growth.

Snapshot of Today’s Newsletter:

• How to make the best use of this season

• 4 best practices to strengthen your business systems and infrastructure

• 3 best practices to strengthen your personal systems

Seasons in Business & Life

Bloom follows winter, in the natural world and in your business.

As the months cool, trees shed, animals hibernate, and the vibrancy of summer fades.

But this period of decline sets the stage for the future cycle. The long nights and cold days of winter nurture the soil, build energy reserves, and lay the foundation necessary for an abundant bloom in the next season.

Your business follows a similar pattern.

Periods of rapid external growth alternate with quieter seasons where you get to redirect the focus internally. When business is booming, it’s tempting to capitalize on every growth opportunity. But that continuous hyper-output takes a toll on both you, your team, and ultimately your customers.

Like an ever-blooming plant exhausting itself to produce flowers year-round, you risk depleting your resources when constantly operating in overdrive.

Many businesses in this season, and possibly you, are experiencing a call to slow down right now.

While continuing to push for growth is not impossible, it might feel like you’re trying to push a boulder uphill. Like it’s costing more energy and resources to get the same results you’ve been getting.

This is a great time to honor that change in seasons and to turn inward, both in your business and personally.

It’s time to redirect your energy towards strengthening your systems and infrastructure, preparing for your next season of growth.

It’s time to stabilize your foundations, eliminate the noise and pressure, and ultimately expand your capacity. Both in your business and personally.

I’ll share with you what I do for my companies and for my clients.

Strengthen your Business Systems & Infrastructure

If you and you’re team are feeling too overwhelmed to add anything to your plate or to push on growth further, then don’t.

Take a pause and instead, focus on stabilizing your systems and infrastructure.

These 5 best practices will set you up for greater momentum in the next season:

1) Stabilize your responsibility to your Clients

Instead of tunnel-visioning on client acquisition, focus on client success.

• Catch up on client deliverables and promises

• Surprise and delight by overdelivering with your current clients

• Review and optimize your client delivery systems

Not only will this clean up the current queue of client delivery and free up capacity on your team, but making your clients extra happy this season can mean some juicy referrals to kick off the next season.

2) Stabilize Revenue, Expenses, and Profit

How are finances doing? What are your projections for 2024?

• If your revenue continues as is, will you be ok? If not, what needs to be done to stabilize?

• Do an audit on your subscriptions and expenses. Eliminate whatever is not needed.

• Catch up on bookkeeping, accounting, and taxes.

It’s a good time to review, analyze, and stabilize your numbers.

3) Review and optimize your infrastructure and systems

Where is there operational friction or bottlenecks in your processes?

• Review your Value Processes and improve for efficiency. Automate workflows.

• Review your SOPs and update your Knowledge Base.

• Review your meetings system, eliminate noise and time killers, optimize for productivity.

• Clean up communication channels and eliminate unused or noisy channels.

Go fix it now before it becomes an issue during growth season.

4) Review your North Star and plan out 2024

Get ahead of the game and create your strategic plan for the next season and year.

• Review your Vision, Mission, and Values. Make necessary updates and reinvigorate your team.

• Create your Goals for 2024

• Create your OKRs for the next season

Don’t wait till next year to start planning next year. Start now and you’re already ahead of your market.

Strengthen your Personal Systems & Infrastructure

Creating momentum in business also requires that you expand your personal capacity.

Take advantage of this season to turn inward and stabilize your inner systems.

1) Regulate your Nervous “System” = expand your Capacity

You’ve been in the constant “fight-flight-fawn-freeze” grind of the growth season.

Time to switch gears to recovery and rejuvenation.

High performers, like athletes, spend more time in recovery than in high performance. That’s for good reasons.

Recovery allows you to stabilize and expand your nervous system’s window of tolerance. This increases your capacity to operate in high gear without burning out.

Give yourself more time and space this season to disconnect from work and to work on YOU.

2) Review your personal Vision and Goals

Same way you would plan 2024 for your business, plan for your personal life.

• Revisit your personal vision and goals

• Re-embody your Future Self today

• Create a plan for what you want to prioritize in 2024

Your business game will always be a reflection of your inner game.

3) Reassess your Values and Commitments

When you operate on autopilot for some time, you sometimes make commitments that aren’t in alignment with your values.

Now is a good time to review them and eliminate everything that not’s aligned.

• Revisit your personal Values

• Audit each area of your life (work, relationships, social, wellness, purpose)

• Audit your commitments and where you spend your time, energy and attention

Anything that’s not a full-body FUCK YES (aligned with your values), eliminate them.

Clear the noise and pressure. Create space to tune into your wisdom.

Operate from there.

Cheering for you this season!

Your Pal,

Colin

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The Weekly Round-Up

Awesome content and things I’ve shared this past week…

• Playing the Inner Game of Entrepreneurship (Monk Mode Monday)

• Creating Avatar Clarity with 3 Ideal Client Profiles (LinkedIn)

• Turning expectations into agreements (YouTube)

• How to retrain your new hires (YouTube)

• Secret to business success (YouTube)