Harvest Before You Plan
In this minisode of The Sheila Botelho Show, I’m talking about what it means to harvest in your mind before you plan: seeing the outcome of a vision clearly enough to feel it, share it, and invite other people into it before the first step is taken. It’s for founders, CEOs, and leaders heading into year-end planning who want next year to grow from clarity.
This fall, I spent a day on my friend’s newly established peony farm. I’ve watched her bring it together over the last year plus. She painted her vision for a group of good friends and flower lovers, and they came and put their hearts into the planting.
Standing in that field, I kept thinking about the conversations I have with business owners in every kind of industry. The vision comes first. And it truly comes together once the planting begins.
This is Self Care for Business in practice and a core part of the Seasons Success Method. When you know what you’re growing and why, you lead with steadier footing, you draw the right people in, and you build impact and wealth that can keep expanding.
Plant what you can already see.
In This Episode:
A day on a newly established peony farm and why it stayed with me
What it means to harvest in your mind before you plan
Why a vision grows stronger once other people can see it too
The moment a vision truly comes together
The parallel I see across founders and leaders in every kind of business
One aligned action to take this week
More From Sheila:
✍️ Sheila’s Notes – The reflections I write only here. For your Expansion Season.
Your Vision Map – Name what you are building before you build it.
Work With Me – Choose the most aligned pathway for your season of business
Transcript: Harvest Before You Plan | EP 640
Sheila: [00:00:00] You can see what you want to build next, then you sit down to plan it, and suddenly it feels heavy. Well, today I’m sharing the step I trust before any plan gets made. I’ve been building businesses and working with founders in every kind of industry, and this step tends to show up every time.
I’ll take you to a special day on my friend’s new peony farm, and by the end, you are gonna leave with one shift that makes your vision easier to share and easier to grow.
Hi, welcome to the podcast. I’m Sheila Botelho, and I believe true success is built from the inside out. This minisode is designed to help you live into what lights you up this week.
This fall has been extra special because I spent several days on my friend’s peony farm as she was newly establishing it by planting the roots. Now, a lot went into this before the week where everybody was planting. It was a thing to behold. This is newly established, and I [00:01:00] had the pleasure of watching her bring it together over the last year plus.
She had a vision for this land, and she shared it. She painted that vision for a group of good friends and flower lovers, and they came. They showed up and put their hearts into the planting. It was so wonderful to be a part of and to watch, to see her vision held by so many people at once, everyone coming together for something that they could all see, at least the beginnings of.
And I kept thinking, “I have this conversation with business owners all the time,” people running practices, product companies, consulting firms, leaders of big organizations, and people stepping into fractional work. Every kind of business seems to come back to the beginning, and it’s this. Before a single root went into the ground, my friend had already harvested that field in her mind She knew what she was growing.[00:02:00]
She knew why. She saw it so clearly that she could paint it for other people, and they wanted to be a part of it. It was a lot of work, and people showed up happily. And that’s what I mean by harvesting in your mind before you plan. We’re heading into the time of year, at least in this part of the world, where so many of us open the calendar and start mapping next year.
Goals, launches, budgets, hires, and it’s tempting to start right there. Well, I wanna invite you to start one step earlier. See the harvest first. What does it look like when it’s in full bloom? Who is there with you? How does it feel to walk through it? This requires some imagination, but that is how good things get built, things that are aligned for you.
When you can see this, your plan can get simpler because you know what you’re planting toward, and the right people will [00:03:00] find their way in. Your team, your clients, your collaborators, the people who care, you’ve painted something that they can see too. And then the part that moved me the most was the vision truly came together once the planting began.
Every person who showed up added their own care to that field. The picture that she held grew fuller with every pair of hands that was involved, and your business works the same way. You hold the vision, and you share it, and then you begin, and it comes alive in the doing with the people who choose to plant alongside of you.
So before you plan, harvest, see it, feel it, paint it for someone, and then start planting. This week before you touch next year’s plan, take 10 minutes to picture the harvest in full detail, then describe it out loud to one person that you trust. And if this resonated, [00:04:00] join me in Sheila’s Notes, my weekly newsletter where I share what I’m thinking about between episodes.
You’ll find the show notes for this episode at sheilabotelho.com/640. And if you’re a founder or leader in a season of change and you’d love a room of people to plant alongside, we have some exciting things happening. So go check out sheilabotelho.com/work-with-me, and you can inquire there to see what I have for you.
Thank you so much for listening. I hope you have a beautiful rest of your week, and I will see you on the next episode.
