In my last blog, I discussed a gardening analogy that would help you decide which ideas to pursue and which to drop. An important question to ask yourself in business is, “How quickly do I need to produce revenue from this idea?” If you need money from it immediately, choose an idea that can be implemented and brought to market quickly. If money isn’t pressing, you can work on ideas that take longer to implement. Years ago, money was more of a pressing concern for me, so I selected ideas that would generate revenue in a few weeks to a couple months. I call these types of ideas “early harvest crops.” They produce results quickly, but they also might burn out quickly too.
Now that I have revenue streams in place, I focus on a lot of projects that take longer to gestate but which produce ongoing revenue down the road. I call these “late harvest crops.” For example, some types of corn are late harvest. Their gestational periods are longer. Let’s say you have an idea that may take 1-3 years to generate revenue, go ahead and start it in motion — especially if you have the time, space and resources to take a few steps forward on it. I do this with my ideas and projects. In fact, I get several of them going at once. I plant a mix of early harvest and late harvest crops.
Some ideas are like fruit trees. They take 3-5 years to bear fruit, so you want to go ahead and plant them. They don’t take a lot of energy. You put them in the ground, make sure they’re protected and have water. Overall, they aren’t high maintenance, but 3-5 years down the road, they can bring you a continual ongoing harvest. So think ahead with your seeds. Don’t get so wrapped up in “I have to have money right now” that you neglect planting some late harvest crops as well. You need those to start evening out your cash flow.
For example, IdeaMarketers.com has been both a long-term and a short-term producer for me. It’s taken a lot of time and energy over the years. Usually it runs smoothly and requires little effort for months on end. But let’s say I’m going to launch a new revenue stream inside the site, that can be time intensive. Other times the site needs a facelift and requires a lot of effort to remodel. Now that it’s been around for over a decade and gets lots of traffic, it’s a wonderful advertising revenue source. That requires very little effort on my part and provides a consistent cash flow — whether I’m working or not. This is an example of a fruit tree or late harvest crop.
When you have fruit trees in place in your business, you don’t have to work like crazy all the time. You don’t get caught in the create it, launch it, create it trap.
The more ongoing revenue streams you can create the better. You want a mix of both early and late-harvest revenue streams. It’s up to you to look at your pressing needs and decide where to put your focus.
I’ve noticed since I’ve been in business for 21 years, I spend less time on the create it-launch it hamster wheel, and more time watering and feeding my late harvest crops. For example, the time I spend building relationships on Facebook, writing blogs, and creating content all go into the fruit tree I call “Relationship Capital.”
Building rapport with people is a late harvest crop. Relationships are worth gold. They pay and they keep on paying. You don’t always see immediate fruit though. Businesses, families and collaborate relationships are late harvest crops and you have to just trust that one day they are going to bear fruit. Keep feeding them with positive energy.
I may launch 2-3 early harvest revenue streams in a year, but I’m always feeding my late harvest crops. I’m doing things that build relationships and that drive traffic to my sites so that our passive revenue stays steady and even increases. That’s where I spend most of my money with virtual assistants — on the late harvest crops.
So when you think about your idea seeds, don’t get frustrated when you don’t have the time or resources to make them happen. You may not have everything in your soil to make an idea grow. If you’ve taken the time to build relationship capital, a colleague might step in and bridge the gap. For example, I’m never going to be a person of meticulous routines and consistency, but I hire and joint venture with people who are.
If your soil is missing something, you can get an additive to enrich it. That requires being honest enough with yourself to acknowledge your weaknesses and bring in other people to fill those gaps. This can be done with joint ventures, bartering, subcontracting and hiring. That’s why building relationship capital is so important!
About Marnie Pehrson Kuhns
Marnie Pehrson Kuhns is a Certified SimplyAlign Practitioner™ who uses music and creativity to mentor you past barriers, fears and doubts to discover, create, align with, and deliver your soul’s song (the mission, message or purpose you are on this earth to live). Marnie is a best-selling author with 31 fiction and nonfiction titles. If you'd like Marnie and her husband Dave to work with you personally on Your Great Reinvention, get a FREE 20-minute strategy session with Marnie here.
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