1498: Your biggest WINS might just be your biggest THREAT!

Speaker A: Hey, what is up? Welcome to this episode of the wantrepreneur to Entrepreneur podcast. As always, I'm, um, your host, Bryan Loframento. And this week is a very special week here on the show leading up to episode 1500, which is a crazy milestone that, to be completely honest, never, ever did I imagine hitting that m milestone. And so because of that, I'm a little bit nostalgic, I'm a little bit reflective. And that's why this week is a very special miniseries of episodes where we are talking about about entrepreneurial seasons. I believe that it is so important for all of us to understand and have awareness of so that we can identify the seasons as they hit us. Why? Because every single season presents different challenges, different questions, different opportunities, and different gifts, but only if we understand the season that we're in, the role that we should be playing and how we move through that season. So on Monday's episode, we talked all about planting season. On Tuesday, we went straight into growing season. Yesterday's episode was about pruning season. And the final episode that we're discussing this week is the one that everyone thinks that they want, that everyone thinks is the goal. But hopefully I'll change your perspective a little bit about that. I am excited about this one. Let's dive in. My giant disclaimer at the top of all of these episodes this week is the fact that these seasons m unlike calendar seasons, unlike weather seasons that we all get to enjoy wherever it is that you live, is that entrepreneurial seasons are not linear. Entrepreneurial seasons do not have a defined length or time of year. When they come about, entrepreneurial seasons are quite fluid. They can change way faster than the weather changes in New England. So that. And so that is to say that sometimes one of these seasons might last days, weeks, months, quarters, even years. Heck, in some cases, if we zoom way out over a lifetime, some of these seasons could fill decades. But the other flip side of that is that sometimes we can weave through all of these seasons in the course of one month, certainly in the course of one quarter, maybe sometimes in the course of one week. And even sometimes it can feel like we jump from one season to the other, even in the middle of one day. And so that's why it's really important to understand these seasons, how they fit in, why they fit in, and most importantly, the role that they all play. And so, having talked about the three seasons leading up to today of, uh, planting and then growth and then pruning, today we're talking about the season that is the most desirable. The season that every entrepreneur says, that's the season that I live for. This is the season that I want. But there are some dangers about this season, as fun as it is, because we are talking about harvest season. This is where we get to harvest the fruits of all of our efforts. And because we often colloquially use that term of fruits and fruits of our labor, let's start there. Imagine walking through an apple orchard. You see hundreds of apples hanging from the trees. What do you notice? Well, of course you notice the fruit. What don't you notice, though? You don't notice the years, the planting, the watering, the storms that actually helped that fruit grow. You don't notice the pruning. You do not see the roots. You don't see visibly the seasons that have passed while that fruit has been growing. You see the visible outcome, not the invisible journey that produced it. And that's exactly how we view success. And so I very much believe that there is a dangerous illusion of harvest season because harvesting makes outcomes look obvious. Once the fruit is there, people start telling stories. That's just the way that it works. They look at, of course it's an apple tree. Of course an apple grew on it. They say, of course that business succeeded. Of course that podcast grew. Of course that founder made it. No, nothing is obvious at the beginning. Harvesting makes uncertainty look inevitable, but only in hindsight. And it's that hindsight piece that I think is so important for us to remember, because success almost never arrives when we expect it, and it rarely arrives. I'd argue it never arrives because of what we did yesterday. I use that analogy so frequently in so many of our episodes, is that if you and I go to the gym today and we do the world's best workout, the world's most effective workout, the workout that most pushes us in the direction of the fitness of the whatever it is that we're looking for. If we do that at the gym today, tomorrow, we will look the exact same. And in fact, we'll probably feel worse. And that's a big part of what we talked about during Tuesday's episode about the growing season. And so success does. Does not arrive because of what we did yesterday. It usually arrives because of what we did months ago, quarters ago, years ago. And that's what makes harvest season so strange. It is such an interesting dichotomy because the work and the reward are actually separated by time, sometimes a lot of time. And when we talk about time, one thing that I like to lean on is compounding. We've all seen that, that graphic that goes around at least a few times a year of 1.01 to the 365th power. And if you just get 1% better every single day for 365 days, you're going to end up, I think the number is like 37 times better off than how you started the year. However, if you get 1% worse every day, if you do 0.99 to the 365th power, you essentially go down to zero. And so we understand compounding when it comes to financial compounding, but few people understand or think about or embrace entrepreneurial compounding. I love when I hear fellow entrepreneurs, I'm gonna shout out Chris Hardy, who recently got to hang out with our team. And Chris Hardy was an amazing guest on the show. It's actually someone who I went to college with. Chris and I was, we actually ended up completely randomly on a business project together, junior year of college, where we made a business plan of a real life local business in the Boston area. And the reason why I'm shouting out Chris Hardy in today's episode is because when Chris hung out with our team, he brought up a lesson that he learned from his dad, where his dad always reminds him, chris, one thing leads to another, and that is a powerful force in our lives, in our relationships, in our business journeys. One conversation with leads to another. One relationship creates another, One opportunity tends to open another opportunity. And one podcast episode becomes another, and then another and another. And for a long time, nothing seems to happen. But then suddenly, everything seems to happen. But suddenly is usually years in the making. And that's why you can pick literally any successful entrepreneur and the world notices them during harvest season. But the entrepreneur, you and I, we remember planting season. The public only ever sees the acquisition, the book launch, the speaking career, the funding round, the viral moment. But for us, we remember and this is healthy. This is a big argument that I'm making. We're gonna talk about the trap of harvest season in just a second. I think we need to remember the uncertainty, the rejection, the repetition, the invisible work. Because harvesting can can create a distorted picture of reality. And that's why for me, when I talk to particularly newer entrepreneurs and they assume that harvesting is the easy season, I remind them that sometimes it's the most dangerous, because harvesting can convince you that you're smarter than you are. You start believing the fruit happened because of me. And maybe it did, but maybe the timing helped, maybe the market helped, maybe relationships helped, maybe a certain degree of luck. I use that word very carefully. When it comes to entrepreneurship, maybe a certain degree of luck or external factors helped. And harvesting can create arrogance if you're not careful. And that's why when I list out the entrepreneurial traits, it usually goes something like delusion. I believe every entrepreneur needs a level of delusion. Humility is one of those. Persistence, commitment, consistency, all of these things factor into it. And it's that humility that is so important, because the trap of living in harvest. There's a big warning here. Some people spend so much time celebrating harvesting that they stop planting. I'm going to say that one more time because this was for sure the most difficult lesson for me to learn in my early 20s, when my agency had its first six figure year. Some people spend so much time celebrating the harvest that they stop planting, they stop learning, they stop experimenting, they stop taking risks, they stop becoming. They try to preserve the current harvest forever. And if you know anything about nature, you know that nature does not work that way. And neither does entrepreneurship. Just think about a farmer. Imagine if you and I had a farm and we have this amazing, beautifully abundant harvest and we say to ourselves, this is amazing. Let's just enjoy this forever. What happens if all we do is harvest? The field is not gonna produce anything, because harvest is not the end of the cycle. Harvest creates the opportunity for the next cycle. And so we come to what I believe is the biggest lesson and gift that we can extract from harvest season. Because I believe that one of the healthiest things that harvest season can teach us is gratitude. Because harvest reveals how many people and things and lessons contributed to outcomes that we often claim as our own. Think about the mentors along the way, the customers, the partners, the friends, the family, the employees, the listeners, the supporters. The fruit may hang from your tree. The, uh. But so many hands helped cultivate it. So you already know if you've been tuning into this week's episodes, that I am very much in the feels leading up to episode 1500. And I fully recognize that that milestone, we hear it from guests, we hear it from listeners, we hear it from potential guests, we hear it from PR agents, we hear from so many people who I'm so grateful to be part of the wantrepreneur to entrepreneur ecosystem. And in their congratulations and in their shared excitement, I can tell that that number looks like a harvest. And in many ways it is. But when I think about this weekend's episode 1500, I don't think about it as a milestone. I think about the thousands of moments that got here. Just one recording at A time. One guest, one conversation, one lesson, one listener, one. How frequently do I talk about the fact that it's a cliche in the sports world? I feel like we criticize athletes that say, hey, we're just going to take it one game at a time. But it's true. You can only play one game at a time. You can only record one episode at a time, and then you do it over and over and over again. The milestone is not the miracle. The repetition is. And so when we think about what is the real purpose of harvest, the purpose of harvesting is not consumption. It's a rare case in our entrepreneurial journeys where we actually get confirmation, because harvest is evidence. And I think it's a really healthy mindset to remind ourselves, harvest is evidence. So that's good evidence that the planting mattered, evidence that the growth mattered, evidence that the pruning mattered. But harvest does not create meaning. It reveals it. Uh, and so I think that we have to ask ourselves. I've been at the end of every episode, I've talked about the question that I believe we need to ask ourselves and in each of these seasons. And I think instead of asking, what am I harvesting? We need to ask, we need to reflect what produced this harvest. Because that answer contains the blueprint for the future. There's no doubt about it. I know how appealing harvest season is. Harvest season is beautiful. It's rewarding, it's validating, it's exciting. But it's also so easy to misunderstand, because the fruit tends to tempt us to focus on the outcomes while forgetting the origins. And the harvest is not the story. The harvest is the result of the story. But every piece of fruit can trace itself back to a seed, just like every milestone can trace itself back to a decision. And every success can trace itself back to a season when there was no evidence that it would ever arrive. And that's what makes harvest season so special. It's not proof that you got lucky. It's proof that something planted a long time ago and finally became visible. So if you find yourself in harvest season, which we all go through these seasons, it's so important to remember the harvest is not where the story ends. It's where the next season begins. I hope these seasons this week have hit you at the right time, in the right place, in the right way, because each of these seasons, hopefully you've now heard, plays a very important role. None of these seasons do the things that they're meant to do without the seasons that come before them and the seasons that come after them. So I've had a ton of fun reflecting and sharing all of these seasons throughout this week's episodes. I hope that you took notes, if that's your style. I hope that you internalized and, uh, filed into your mindset catalog and library the ways to embrace and extract the gifts that we can get from each of these seasons. Because we've got some really awesome content geared up for you in the second half of 2026. Time is absolutely flying by this year, and that's why as we approach episode 1500, we are already working on what the rest of 2026 and beyond looks like here at the show. So we are doing everything possible to give you all of the resources and conversations and tools and access to other entrepreneurs to absolutely blast off to new levels in each of these seasons. So make sure you pound that subscribe button. Cause we've got some fun episodes coming up. And of course, this weekend is very special episode 1500 that I'm so excited about. And that's why I invite you pound that subscribe button. We'll see you, as always, every single day right here on, um, on the wantrepreneur to Entrepreneur podcast.