The Seasons Of Business

Well, what's good everybody.

It's your boy Greg Hickman.

And in this episode, I want to talk about the seasons of business and now I'm not talking about seasons like fall, winter, spring, but I'm talking about seasons like Game of Thrones style season. Let's get it going.... For three years, my agency built funnels and automation systems for the biggest names in marketing today. Since then, I've transformed that agency into a hyper profitable training and consulting business. While everyone is out there and talking about scale like it's some sort of destination, we'll be asking the real question, how do you transform your business into a more scalable model using the knowledge, skills, and expertise that you already have? This podcast is here to give you the answer. Join me and follow along as I learn, apply and share the strategies I'm using to build my multimillion-dollar business. My name is Greg Hickman and welcome to scale

So look I was having a conversation with one of my good friends,  Ian garlic. You should check out his podcast called the garlic marketing show. I believe. Search garlic podcast. We'll find it. Um, and we've had this conversation, we go back and forth a lot on this, talking about like, what season of your business are you in? And like, do you understand what season? And, um, we dove into this and you know, while many people think seasons like winter, spring and fall, that's not exactly what we were talking about. We were talking about seasons, more like a TV show, right? And so, uh, you know, if you think about any sort of TV show, um, you know, I know a lot of people, you know, at the time of recording this, people are like in love with game of Thrones. Um, spoiler alert, I don't watch game of Thrones. I've never watched one episode.

I know I'm missing out. Believe me. I know I'm missing now, but I can't just get pulled in because I was one of those guys that got sucked into lost years ago. And like I watched last, like it was my job. Uh, it was just a big part of my life. I was on all the blogs and the forums. I was like doing research. I was like, I can't commit to a show like this again and I easily get sucked in. So I knew, I'm like, I just gotta like not watch these shows. Anyway. So, um, we started talking about this and he in his, his analogy was like Seinfeld, right? Which probably isn't actually now that I think about the best show for the analogy that I'm going to be talking about. So let's think about like a show like, ah, lost or game of Thrones or whatever show you watch now, you know, the show starts, right?

And there's, you know, season one, now I'm not going to go into the all of the pilot episode and all that stuff, but you know, many successful shows like they continue on in the case of lost, you know, there were like seven seasons and you know, so whatever show we're looking at, like we're thinking about what are the different seasons of our business, you know, and so in this case, let's say there's seven, there's seven season and, but understanding where you're at in your business, right? Like you need to do certain things that apply to that season. And kind of executing and operating two, three seasons ahead of where you're at sometimes can actually put you, um, you know, in a bad place. So like, think about what your goals are, right? Like here is your now and then here's, you know, your future state, you know, so your future state is, you know, on the far right and you know, just picture a timeline, you know, with seven, seven stages and each of those stages is a season.

And like think about a show, right? In each show you have, you know, character development, you know, they're storyline, you know, things happen, right? And we, we meet new characters in seasons three seasons, six, like not everyone that we need to know do we get introduced to in season one and like the, the challenges and the problems that we face and will face in the season five. Like we don't necessarily know what those are in season one. Right? And so you can plan, like, you can totally say like, Hey, here's where I'm, that, here's where I'm at now and you know, here's what I want to get to. What are the things that I need to be focused on right now? Like how do I reverse engineer my, my goals into seasons of a business? Like what are those milestones, right? You know, if you have, you haven't hit $1 million and that say your goal and you're starting at zero, like you should probably get to like 20, 30 k a month first, right?

And then, you know, 50, 60 k a month, right? And then from 50 to, you know, up into the million run rate and like the things that are happening between those stages are going to be different. The types of resources and team you're going to need are going to be different. The problem is that you're going to have, are going to be different, right? So there's going to be new characters coming into your world and all of that great stuff. And so thinking about your business, like it's like seasons, if you know we're at right, you know, say we'll use, um, you know, orange, say we're in the sea, like we're in season two of our business right now, right? Like we want to be focused on like what are the activities that you know are going to help us kind of evolve to what, what milestones and metrics we have for what season three would look like, right?

What tools, resources, what team? Maybe there are certain mentors that we know that, you know, or coaches we can hire that you know, are really good at getting to getting us to season four, season five. Like let's, let's work with those people in this wave of our, in this season of our business. So the next couple of season and then maybe you meet, you know, people that are going to be good at helping you get to your goals that are in season seven, right? Like if you look at a lot of startup companies, um, you know, oftentimes once the company hits a certain revenue, mark, the CEO who got them there isn't going to be the CEO who actually takes them to the next lever level because that CEO doesn't have experience, say taking a company from 10 million to, you know, 100 million, right? And so they're going to go look for CEOs that have experienced going from 10 to a hundred and they're going to bring those types of people into the business to accelerate it, right?

So new character development, like new types of coaches and mentors that you might need new types of systems. Like at some point maybe even you do need to go get an office space, whatever those things are for your story, your season, like you need to start figuring out like how am I going to advance to the next season? But here's one of the, you know, the, the, I think the challenges that I see happen a lot, right? So let's say, let's look at this. I'm going to erase a little bit here. You know, let's say we're looking at a seven series episode, a seven series. You know, again, for those listening on iTunes, you know, imagine just the timeline with seven dots, right? each.is a season. And let's say that this time, this first timeline, you know, seven season we'll say is me, right? And for me right now I'm operating like, and again this is just a, a story analogy but like say like myself, I'm in you know, season three of my business.

So let's assume I'm in season three. So all of my activities, you know the things that I'm doing every single day to get me from season three to season four and even to season five and season six are going to be different for you if say your you started like after me, right? And so I'm on season three but you're just, you got started a year ago so you're like your season one is like my season two but what ends up happening is you, you start looking at someone like me, right? And so, and I'm saying you and me, but you could replace me with someone else that you might be looking at or following. And you know, if this is you here where like my year two is your year one in business, if your focused on, you know what I'm doing in my season three, four and five and you're trying to mimic me, you're going to have a ton of struggle, right?

Because I've already done a bunch of stuff between my seasons one in three and you're like, you haven't looked at that in many cases and I see this happening a lot is like, hey, like I see this person doing that, I'm going to go do it. And I'm like, well like I know that person like David and business for 15 years. Like you're, you just started like what they're doing is so out of sequence for you. Like we need to go through your character development. Like there's a lot of things that they did in years one through five that you still haven't done yet that enabled them to be where they're at, you know, 15 in. And so this is kind of like the classic case of, you know, comparing yourself to, to people at the wrong time, right? Like, you can't compare yourself to me right now unless we both started at the exact same time.

Right? Um, let alone, you shouldn't be comparing yourself to me anyway, but like if you're like, hey, like I'm going to do what Greg's doing and I'm just getting started and Greg's in like, you know, five years ahead of me. Well that's not going to necessarily be beneficial for you because you're going to be doing things that like almost like you're operating at season seven when you don't even know the activities that should've brought you to that. Right? And so you're skipping things and experiences that you kind of have to go through in order for that season to make sense and work for you. Right? Imagine just dropping into CV season seven of lost or season, like whatever season it is of game of Thrones without having watched the beginning. Like imagine watching the, you know, the movies, the trilogies. Like if you watched the last, the last movie before you watched the first one, like you're probably going to be a little bit in the dark.

You're going to be asking tons of questions. And that ends up happening when you compare yourself to someone that's in a different season, just because they're doing something right now doesn't mean they're in the same season as you. So my encouragement to you here is one cash herself. Like, Hey, when you go go to model somebody and model their behavior and what they're doing, make sure that like you've also looked at what season they might be in their business, how long have they been in the game? Because some of the things that they're doing now might be way too far off for what you should be doing. And you should be looking and comparing yourself to what was that person doing when they first started or when they first hit 20 k a month. Like that would be how you would compare, right? So start looking at your business as um, seasons, right?

What season are you in? Like there's some character development yourself, you know, other other players, team members, coaches that are gonna come into your world, um, experiences your family, your family might grow. Now you have the plot thickens, right? In season five. Now you have a kid, the systems that you need are different, right? You got to simplify your business because of x, Y, z thing that happened, right? All of those things are going to keep moving you towards the end of, or you know, at the end, but like your final destination, right? And so you really need to understand what season are you in? And if I go to execute on a, B, and c, am I executing out of season right out of sequence, uh, if you will, because that'll do more harm than then. Good, right? You could solve the right problems in the wrong order and you can destroy your business or you could solve the right problems in the right order for where you're at. And you can

faster than you've ever moved before in your life, right? And so check your season, y'all check your season. If you've been looking to grow and scale your agency, but you're tired of trading time for money, custom projects, and relying on referrals alone, it can be hard. That's probably why. If I gave you five, 10 or 20 clients right now, you or your business would break. I struggle with the same thing for a while until I figured out a better way. So I created a special experience called foundations to help you package up your knowledge and experience into a profitable online program, launch your automated sales system and systemize your fulfillment. You'll work directly with me, my team, and a group of entrepreneurs just like you to implement the systems and get the help you need to learn more and see if it's a fit. Just hop on over to myscalablebusiness.com and schedule a call with us today.