When I taught a free class on making more inclusive data visualization, I got a TON of responses that fell into one of three buckets:

1. This class was AWESOME!
2. I missed the class, where is the recording?
3. This class was terrible, you were wrong on all these points, being exclusive with these suggestions, and neglected to mention these ideas.

It’s how I respond to the third bucket of comments that let’s me know what season I’m in with my business.

Expand or Contract Audience Season

My response, at that point in time, to the five paragraph paper of an email with bolded headings and numbered lists detailing my misgivings… was a chuckle. It’s nice that people are so passionate about such an important topic, I thought to myself.

I was in a season of wanting to expand my audience by offering new content, pushing people’s thinking, and getting comfortable being a lil controversial.

Without a doubt in my mind, I have also offered new, lightly controversial content in the past, where I got responses in all 3 buckets and my reaction to bucket 3 was fuck this shit.

I had been putting myself out there when I was in a contracting season. Good intentions, wrong timing for my spirit. All I wanted to do was scream I’m trying my best and If you don’t like it, go elsewhere – this was a FREE class.

That’s vastly different than a chuckle.

As important as it is to show up in the world with consistency, I’ve learned that I also have to watch out for changes in my seasons. Heck, I had to learn that I actually have seasons.

We all do.

Audience growth seasons are one version, but we go through others, too.

Expand or Contract Staff Season

When my staff finish a workshop and get an email like “It was truly one of the best and most practical training courses I’ve taken during my career.” it feels SOOOOoooooo good. Me and my staff just doing this at each other over in Slack:

I freakin LOVE having a team that can help me reach more people and get more good data viz out there in the world.

Teams bring a bigger impact.

You know what else teams bring? Problems.

Needs.

Management.

Which – of course! They need guidance from the boss. Makes total sense.

Despite ever better systems and procedures, from time to time I still end up being an absolute bottleneck for my business.

One option is to hire more help, like a COO, and expand even further. This is what Nina did.

It’s also perfectly ok to decide that sounds like too much work.

I’m not a great manager. I don’t even want to manage. I want to be the one in every workshop, passing out the high fives to my students. I have my seasons where I want to shrink the team and be a one-woman show.

But then I think about all the people I wouldn’t be able to help… And it’s like that, back and forth, forever.

Entrepreneurial Seasoning

You can probably identify other areas of your business where you catch seasonal feelings. Like growing or whittling the services you offer.

If you’ve only been in growth mode so far, hang on – winds will shift. That’s not a bad thing. Mary Poppins came in on a change in wind direction, after all.

Jereshia Hawk made a great point on her podcast: If you’ve only seen growth mode and your revenues have been jumping more than 30% each year, you might need to make yourself take a maintenance season.

Seasons can last months. Or hours.

It’s so tricky. So here’s what to do:

Recognize when a season is changing. You can usually tell by your reactions to common events.

Recognize that this is just a season. It won’t last forever. Take advantage of the season you’re in, while you’re there.

Do you have different seasons than the ones I listed out here? What season are you in right now? Email me – I can relate.