Surviving the Winter: How to Thrive in Challenging Business Seasons
I'm excited to share some insights from our latest podcast episode, where we explored the concept of understanding the seasons of your life and business.
🌱 Nature's Seasons as Life's Metaphor: Just as nature has its seasons, so do our bodies, businesses, and relationships. Winter is a time for rest, spring for growth, summer for passion, and autumn for reaping rewards. Recognizing and embracing the season you're in is key to navigating life's ups and downs.
🚶 Personal Journey: I shared my postpartum journey, a winter season of rest and repair, followed by a spring of growth and passion. This personal experience highlighted the importance of acknowledging and honoring our body's seasons.
🕴 Business Seasons: The same concept applies to our careers and businesses. A break from a corporate job can be a winter season, while actively pursuing new opportunities can be a summer season.
❄️ Winter in Business: Winter can feel destructive and challenging, but surviving it can lead to growth and new opportunities. I shared examples of clients who have experienced winter periods in their businesses and how it ultimately led to positive changes.
🔑 Preparation is Key: Just as those prepared for winter are not surprised by it, being aware of the season of your business allows you to be prepared and have the resources needed for success.
🤗 Embrace Your Season: We all go through different seasons in life. By owning our thrones and minding our business, we can navigate these seasons and create a life that rules.
Understanding and embracing your season can help you create a body, business, and life that rules. I'm grateful for your continued support and invite you to share this episode on social media. Feel free to connect with me for more inspiration.
Thank you for tuning in, and remember to subscribe and share the podcast. Here's to a beautiful and bountiful spring of creativity!
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, or your favorite podcast platform. And, you can always watch the episode on Youtube here.
Kimberly Spencer (00:00:00) - Hello, my fellow Sovereigns and welcome back to another episode of the Crown Yourself podcast. I am so excited to be here with you today because this question that I have asked many of my clients has provided such a powerful shift for them in recognizing how to discern and navigate the season that they're in. And living out here in the country outside of Austin, Texas, and growing our own food now, which has been so cool and so exciting. I mean, we currently have a squash plant that's trying to take over the world. It produces so much and I don't know how much squash I can actually eat, but it is a Bountiful crop and it's allowed me to really reflect on how deeply and interconnected we are to nature. We are nature, we are natural beings. And thus to deny this seasonality and think that we need to flatline at some point of productivity is just not it's not natural. It's like there's no other word for it. It's just not natural. And so in this podcast episode, this concept of understanding what season of your business you're in may allow you to have a little bit more grace.
Kimberly Spencer (00:01:22) - And that's my intention in that it'll allow you to see and shine a light on the season of your business, your life, your relationships, and how they are all interplay and interchanging and allowing for that natural cycle. Because when you do, you actually go into the flow a lot easier because you're not trying to flatline. So let's get into the episode. Welcome to the Crown Yourself podcast, where together we build your empire and transform your subconscious stories about what's possible for your business, body, and life. I'm your host, Kimberly Spencer, founder of Crown Yourself and I'm a master mindset coach, bestselling author, and TEDx speaker, known to my clients as a game changer. Each week you get the conscious leadership strategies you need to help you reign with courage, clarity, and confidence so that you too can make the income and impact you deserve. Imagine this podcast as your royal invitation to step into your full potential and reign in your divine purpose. Your sovereignty starts here and your reign is now. I am so honored to be here with you tonight.
Kimberly Spencer (00:02:45) - Today, this morning, whenever you are listening to this podcast, I'm currently recording it late at night, but that's because I felt so inspired after a really epic dinner with a client of mine and it was just such a beautiful conversation. And I shared with her something that I've been actually speaking to a lot of my private clients about recently, and I just felt compelled that like, if I am repeating a message, then it must not be just my private clients that need to hear this. And so I wanted to bring this message out to the whole community because I believe that so often we as women in particular men as well, forget that we are natural beings, like we are natural beings that are a part of nature. I mean, there's the law of divine oneness and we can go down that spiritual rabbit hole for a hot second, but that would deter me. That would be a whole rabbit hole to go down in a whole tangent. So I'm not going to go there for right now.
Kimberly Spencer (00:03:53) - But we are natural beings and so often there is a perception and I think a lot of it is contributed, you know, and enhanced by the highlight reel of social media that we think success is linear because we see someone achieve one success and then they achieve another success and then they achieve another success and then another and another. And we're like, Oh my gosh, my success, my wins don't feel anything like this. Like they feel cyclical and funky and ups and downs and circles around and it's like a freaking roller coaster and like, what the heck? And this can be especially true in your business or your career because and your relationships too, quite frankly. Like, because we all are natural beings and also in your body, this is as true for your body as it is for your business, as it is for your relationships. And that is that we are natural beings and thus nature like nature. We have seasons. We have seasons. We have winter and fall and spring and summer.
Kimberly Spencer (00:05:12) - And if we break down the seasons. Winter is a time of rest. It's a time of hibernation. It's a time of dormancy. It's a time of destruction. Even because the plants look dead and things look pretty bleak. Now, sure, winter. I love winter. Winter can be a great season of snuggling by a campfire with a hot cup of cocoa and the one that you love and sharing deep stories into the nighttime and snowboarding down mountains and just embracing this like a chill in the air. If you choose to see it that way, it can also be bleak and cold and hard. And it's a struggle. I mean, if you think back to our ancestors, we had to prepare for winter. We had to stock up because food wouldn't be plenty during winter. And so many people in like yield pioneer days died like winter was the season of death. And then came spring. Spring, the flowers arose, and the seeds started to get planted. Things started to bloom. Things started to feel fresh again.
Kimberly Spencer (00:06:32) - So creation always follows destruction. Spring always follows winter. And then come summer where it's hot and passionate and heavy and there's a relaxation, but also a passion of play and fun in the sun and all that vitamin D that you get to soak up and it makes you feel good and your hormones are feeling great. And there's like this sexiness in the air of just like, what's possible. And some 11 had me a blast. And like there's a passion and a fervor with summer and then comes autumn where we harvest, where we reap what we sowed back in spring, where we get to enjoy the things that we took care of in summer. Because even though it's summer fun, you know, summer loving, you still got a love for the things and nurture the things and have that passionate relationship with the things that you're growing. You still got to water the plants. Just because it's summer doesn't mean you get to go off on vacation and forget all the crops that you've planted.
Kimberly Spencer (00:07:41) - You still got to water them and take care of them and nurture them. But there's a passion because there's the possibility that's beyond sprouting up. It's growing. And then there's the autumn when we harvest that growth and when we experience and reap the bounty and it's Thanksgiving and pumpkin pies and coming together and family and and also preparing for the winter. So what does this look like in our bodies and in our businesses and careers and in our relationships? Well, recently, about a year ago, I had a beautiful baby boy named Colton and my second child and it was in a pretty wintery period. I had lost my dad. I had my son. I knew that I would be going on maternity leave. So I knew that I'd be in a space of rest. I wouldn't be really active in sales in my business. I knew that my body was going to be in a space of repair. Like our bodies need rest that need. They need sleep in order to repair and perform at their highest function.
Kimberly Spencer (00:08:55) - Right. So because of that, nature needs that, too. Nature needs rest. That's why there's winter. That's why we need to remember we're natural beings. So nature needs rest, too. Like things are happening under the surface of the trees and the plants in the soil where it's getting refreshed. It's getting a moment in order to bloom. And I knew that for my body, I was in a space after giving birth. If you've ever had a child, you know that your body is very fleshy. It's very curvy, voluptuous. You've got extra boobies that have like milk and that are, you know, supple and abundant. And my boobs were definitely in autumn. The rest of my body was in winter like my body was in a space of repair and rest and nurturing and just allowing it to be in that space of rest. And there wasn't a summer. You know, the hot summer pushes hard workouts. It was very gentle walks on the beach back when we were living in Australia and just time and space to just snuggle and be with my son and be in this in this beautiful place of rest.
Kimberly Spencer (00:10:16) - And then as I started to grow through the initial phases of the newborn phase, I started to plant a routine again, plant the possibilities of Pilates. I started to plant the seeds of putting my body back together, of repairing my sacrum, of getting my abs to, like, come back in and reconnect and just have everything, get, you know, pulling in. And now I'm in the season of my body and now obviously it's been a year. So the seasons of our life do not necessarily mirror the seasons of nature in the form of months and time. I just want to preface that. So now I'm in a season of much more passion, a fervor of like, I'm training for a marathon, I'm running, I'm exercising harder, I'm pushing my body a bit more, and I'm loving the results that I'm getting. I'm being more diligent with what I'm eating and putting in my body and I'm caring for it and being really loving and supportive with it. But also, I'm in a passionate love affair with my body.
Kimberly Spencer (00:11:31) - Like, I love how she's coming together. I love how I'm feeling her muscles and I love how strong and sexy she's feeling like I know I'm in a summer hot period with my body. And I love that because I'm in a space of passion and I'm very excited for the glow-up reaping of the rewards that I will have next year with my body being in a totally different place than it was this past year. Because this past year I was going through winter and then through the beginnings of spring and just the process of that healing process in essence. And so now I'm in a season of summer. The same is true with your business, though, ladies and gents. The same is true with your business and your career. Like if you go on a hiatus from your corporate job, that's called winter. Unless you're in a hot summer, passionate love affair with recruiting and going for your next job because you just know that you're worth so much more because of all the seeds you planted of all the referrals you got from the last job that you're now just going to fill and push and use in order to get to that next space in your career That can definitely be it, but it depends on how it makes you feel.
Kimberly Spencer (00:12:50) - So is what you're feeling your body saying for your career or your business that your business or your career is in a space of winter and what your business will speak to business mainly your business being in a season of winter can be in a space where it's like feeling a little destructive, like certain things that used to work before, they just aren't working anymore. Like certain things of how things had been done. They just are not. It's not working. And then you get through that awkward, funky space and it's it's winter because you can be strapped for cash flow. Like typically what happens in the winter season of the business is your strapped for cash flow. Sales have fluctuated to some degree. There are maybe team shakeups of team major players shifting or transferring or changing. Or evolving or leaving. Or going. Or growing or what? Winter can feel very destructive in business. It can feel very challenging. And if you can survive winter, you have space to plant in the spring and there is so much space and rest and beauty that can come from the winter that you've gone through because of all the lessons that you then get to plant into new decisions that you then get to make in your business.
Kimberly Spencer (00:14:14) - So for example, I have a client who is struggling with an employee, and that experience, like she's been going through some winter in her business and her employee has definitely been highlighting that period of there's just been extra friction, extra shake-ups, extra all that and when she fired her. It created the seed for new boundaries, new standards of what she would tolerate as a leader and as an employer in her business. The same is true if you have maybe a winter or you have some clients that you are like, Oh, these clients just are the worst. Now we obviously only aim to attract our ideal clients and soulmate clients into our lives, but you know, those clients who maybe they aren't paying on time or maybe there's just a struggle or, you know, I certainly went through the winter of my e-commerce business when I was dealing with three months of a buyout process, dealing with lawyers and negotiations and the stress and the oh and the like. It felt cold and bleak and hard and a struggle.
Kimberly Spencer (00:15:35) - And then on the outside it planted the seed for Crown Yourself. Because I was finished with that winter. So the same is true. You can be through many different seasons in your business, but then once you plant those seeds, the seeds are the things that you learn, the seeds or the new ideas that have borne come through the destruction, the creation that arises through the ashes. And I love this metaphor. Because I see it as a Southern California resident for the past 30-something years. Having grown up in Southern California with the forest fires and all the fires on the hillsides. I remember one time I was driving on the 101 up the coast, and two years ago there had been this very big fire in Agoura Hills or thereabouts. And the hills were charred black, like just black. That was the winter for those hills. And I mean, California doesn't get harsh winters, like snows and whatnot, but we certainly get fires. And the fires just made these hillsides bleak. And it was in a deep space of repair of rest.
Kimberly Spencer (00:16:56) - Like these hills were not looking good or pretty. It was bleak. Pretty bleak.
Kimberly Spencer (00:17:02) - And then.
Kimberly Spencer (00:17:04) - A year later, I was driving up the same 101 to go to Santa Barbara. And the hills, the same hills were the most lush, beautiful green I had ever seen. And seeing that green, just showed me that beauty comes from ashes. And so if you're in winter in your business, typically with most business owners, what I've seen is what their winter looks like. The main issue is strapped for cash flow. Maybe they've had a growth phase and they've harvested some great ideas and put some new things into motion and created some new systems. But the problem is, is that they're not stable and that they're not profitable. They haven't garnered a profit yet. They haven't reaped the rewards of the fulfillment of continuing the recurring income that can come from those programs. So a lot of times, especially if you have a membership deal for your business, sometimes the income comes in the second or third renewal like the main profit of the product comes in the second or third renewal, which is why retention rate is so important.
Kimberly Spencer (00:18:16) - So if you're in the winter, typically the main thing is strapped for cash flow or, or a sudden shift in profits where you're like, Whoa, what the heck happened? Like, we were up here doing $200,000 months and now we're at like 20, like, what is this? And so that is that's the beautiful piece of being able to look at, okay, I'm in winter and just reminding yourself, if you are currently in winter, I know it sucks. I know it looks bleak. I know it's hard. Keep going, keep trusting, and keep seeing your vision and your business for the long term. Because after winter comes spring and everything that you faced in winter, you will have the seeds of new learnings to plant. And that will spring forth from the ground that looks so bleak is now lush and fertile for possibility and for new life and for new creation and for new discovery. And then you move into the hot and heavy summer where maybe you're going through a summer push of like, holy moly, we are scaling five X and I can hardly catch my breath.
Kimberly Spencer (00:19:33) - And I'm so passionate in love with my customers and what we're doing and my team is crushing it and holy shit, this is amazing. And passion. Oh my gosh. I don't know how we're going to sustain it. It's that like a teenage dream. Summer 11. I don't know if this is going to last. Holy crap. But it feels so good right now. And then you go back to school and you harvest. And so then the harvesting period can come from the new learnings or, you know, in our conditioned way, going back to school to gather new learnings, maybe hiring some new mentors to be able to help you sift through and sort through all the new data, new things and new operations that you kind of just duct tape together on your way in that passionate hot romance that you had with the Pinto of an idea that turned into a freaking hot rod Mustang or I'm not a car person, obviously. I know you can't turn a Pinto into a hot rod Mustang, but let's just say you turn to a nice Mustang and like some like hot rod Mustang.
Kimberly Spencer (00:20:37) - But you really tried to put it together as best you could without a manual. And but it was hot and heavy and passionate. Beautiful. And then you have your autumn and you get to reap all those profits and you get to also reap the knowledge. And maybe this helps prevent those really bleak winters. You go back to school, back to getting some more mentorship, back to get some more guidance, back to putting in some new processes, new systems to really sustain and to support you so your winters are not as bleak, so your winters are not strapped for cash flow so that you have some balance, some leftover, some space and some grace. And so the cycle will because the cycle will move again, it'll cycle through. But the winter doesn't have to be the bleak, dark cold that kills businesses left and right. It can be the season of you prepared for it. You were ready for it. You knew it could be coming, and then it's here. And so then you have your extra cash reserves.
Kimberly Spencer (00:21:58) - You know, you're in a winter space and you're able to, instead of feeling like you're bleak and starving, you have a nice hot toddy and snowboard instead and snowboard into spring because you know that you're in that space. So every relationship, whether that's your relationship with your body, your relationship with your significant other, or your relationship with your business. We'll go through seasonal cycles and the economy goes through seasons. Governments go through seasons. Everything is seasonal. So the economy. We may be in a more wintery period right now. But just know there is spring as well and it could be a really glorious, amazing spring. And so keep going. And recognizing what is the season that your business is in. What is the season that the world is in? What is the season that your industry is in? Because there are some industries that may be in a winter of an industry just like. In certain industries, even though school starts in the fall, the industry of education gets hot and heavy and passionate in August because that's when school starts.
Kimberly Spencer (00:23:26) - So looking at your industry, what is a season that your industry is in? Is your industry going through a transition? Is your industry struggling? What is the turmoil of that industry? Or what is that? What season is it in? Is it in spring? Is it planting? Is it new? Is it got new ideas like that's the season that I've seen a lot of podcasters in like podcasting was in spring? I would say the industry was in spring in 2020, 2021, and then it got like hot and heavy doubling and now harvesting. People are harvesting their profits from podcasting or seeing their success or seeing the growth of their businesses because they started podcasting or guess podcasting. But there's also the winter for some people's podcasts that, you know, they just may not have guests. They may be struggling. The biggest thing that I've heard from a lot of podcasters is it's not monetizing and it's not turning a profit. And they're putting a lot of effort and love and heart and intention into it.
Kimberly Spencer (00:24:40) - And it's something that's not actually proving profitable necessarily for their business. And so they need some more strategies to pivot and whatnot, and that can be a fear of the winter. I don't think we're fully there yet, but the industry seasons can last far longer. The same economic seasons can last for years, like the Great Depression. That was a ten-year winter. But just know that no matter what season, your business, your body, your industry, your relationships, your world is in. It is seasonal. Nothing is separate from nature. We are natural beings. So I encourage you to look at your life, look at all of the areas and what season are you in with your relationship with your family, with your business, with your body? What season is each one of these in? Because when we can start to look from a seasonal perspective, it gives us so much more grace. And so much more ease because just like we know, fall comes after summer. We also know that spring comes after winter, so it makes the winters easier to prepare for in the fall in the big, you know, months where we reap tons of rewards or travel all over the world or move forward in our businesses and get to enjoy the profits and the growth that came from that.
Kimberly Spencer (00:26:23) - But being able to be aware that also in August is in not August, but in the autumn or fall months. Seasoned, I should really say, a season of your business, of your body. That's also when you prepare for the winter. And those who are prepared for the winter are then not surprised by it. And they have the necessary resources to get them through so that they can have a beautiful, Bountiful, fresh, creative spring forth. As the seasons pass. If this episode served, please let me know. Take a screenshot of it, and share it in your Instagram stories or on your LinkedIn. I always love seeing your posts, and your shares. I just love being able to interact with you and know that you are truly enjoying becoming the queen that you were born to be. Queens go through Seasons too. So do Kings. We all do so. As always, my fellow sovereigns, own your thrones. Mind your business because your reign is now. Thank you so much for tuning in today.
Kimberly Spencer (00:27:40) - If what you heard resonated with you. Be sure to subscribe and start creating a bigger impact now by sharing this with a friend. Just by doing that one simple act of kindness, you are creating a royal ripple to support more people in their sovereignty. And if you're not already following me on social media, connect with me everywhere at Crown yourself now for more inspiration. I am so excited to connect with you in the next episode and in the meantime, go out there and create a body, business, and life that rules because today you crown yourself.