Think all a farmer has to do is wait until fall to harvest truckloads of delicious tomatoes or corn or squash? Think again! That farmer has worked hard all year long to prepare for that week or two of reward.
Many of you may not know it, but I grew up in a very small town in the Midwest in a family of farmers, so I understand what the farmer goes through to get a good harvest each year.
He prepared the ground following last year’s harvest.
He planted seeds in the spring.
He watered and fertilized and protected his fragile crops from pests and drought and poor weather.
And finally, after months of work, he enjoys the results.
Your business works the same way, and if you take a page from the farmer’s playbook, you’ll soon be reaping the rewards of growth, too.
Think Like a Farmer
Preparing the Ground
This is your brand, your voice, your very presence in your market. If you’re just starting out—like that farmer after his harvest—you’ll spend your time simply becoming known.
Hang out with other people in your niche. Join forums where your ideal clients spend their time. Build a website and start your mailing list. This is the prep work that will form the foundation of a solid business in the future.
Planting the Seeds
Your seeds are your content and products. With each blog post you write, every product you create, you’re planting a seed you can harvest later. But unlike the farmer, your seeds will produce over and over again, endlessly.
In fact, you’ll likely find that blog posts you wrote years ago will continue to bring in new business year after year, with no further help from you. Products can be sold over and over again or reworked into new offers. Podcasts, videos, ebooks and more all continue to work for you, month after month, year after year.
When you think about it that way, it’s easy to see that planting seeds is a critical part of every business.
Nurturing Your Crop
Wouldn’t it be nice if you could just “set it and forget it”? Unfortunately, that style of business rarely works.
Instead, you must spend time nurturing.
- Stay in touch with your email list
- Update old blog posts with new ideas
- Study your stats to improve your traffic and conversions
- Improve your products
It doesn’t take much effort to update your blog posts or tweak your products, and the rewards can be fantastic.
Think Like a Farmer in your business
Of course, being a farmer, or a business owner, is a long-term investment. The work you do today may not pay off for weeks or months to come. But with a strong history of consistent “farming” in your business, you’ll soon see that those long-term rewards are paying off consistently as well.
Check out these other posts for ideas on how to grow your business:
How to Engineer Explosive Growth by Stacking Your Efforts
Why You Need Routines and Schedules
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