Think About Planting Seeds Separately from Decisions About Your Main Business
When a business owner thinks about a next business, it is often discussed as an extension of the main business, or as preparation against the main business doing badly. But "planting seeds" is a judgment of a different character from either. It is not something that demands immediate results; it is a small start, made to see whether anything will sprout in a few years.
The central point of this article is to separate the judgment of planting seeds from the judgment of running the main business. It does not recommend a business you should start; it deals with how to place the timing to try, and how to try.
Jupiter's Cycle of About 12 Years, and the Jupiter Return
Jupiter takes about 12 years to go once around the Sun and stays in one sign for about a year. A Jupiter return — when Jupiter comes back to the position it held when you were born — arrives about every 12 years.
A unit of about 12 years is also a length that is easy to feel as a milestone in a business: about 12 years since founding, or about 12 years since the last large shift. The use of this cycle is to place, at such a milestone period, an opportunity to think about the next seeds. It does not mean that because it is a milestone, you must start something new. The key point is to decide the milestone in advance as a period for taking stock and considering whether to plant seeds.
Jupiter's change of signs, roughly once a year, also serves as a guide. For example, on July 26, 2027, Jupiter moves from Leo into Virgo. A yearly turning point like this can be used as a period to start a small trial, or to review a trial you are continuing.
Decide the Scale of the Planting in Advance
Where seed-planting tends to fail is when what was meant as a trial has, before you notice, come to consume time and money on the scale of the main business. To prevent this, it is effective to decide the upper limits of scale before you start: an upper limit on time spent, an upper limit on cost, and a time for review. A trial that starts after those three are decided can be finished, even if nothing sprouts, without damaging the main business.
The cycles of the stars become material for deciding that time of review. Take roughly one year later, when Jupiter moves to the next sign, as the time of the first review. At the review, you judge — as a decision separate from the main business — whether to continue, change the form, or finish.
Here is one concrete work example: a situation where you try a small separate service, in the form of responding to consultations from existing customers that are repeatedly raised and sit slightly outside the main business. In this case, if you treat it as seed-planting, you place an upper limit on the number of cases or the time you respond to, and decide in advance that you will judge continuation after one year. If you keep responding without deciding an upper limit, it is no longer seed-planting, but an unplanned expansion of the business.
Planting Seeds When the Main Business Is Doing Well, and When It Is Not
Seed-planting when the main business is doing well tends to have a vague purpose, because there is room to spare. Seed-planting when it is doing badly tends to become a large gamble out of impatience. Each period has its own skew.
The advantage of using the cycles as a guide is that the period for consideration arrives regardless of whether business is good or bad. Whether things are going well or badly, at the milestone period you line up the state of the seeds on the desk. By deciding the timing of consideration by cycle rather than by business conditions, you can separate the judgment of seed-planting from your mood at the time.
Of course, a conclusion of "we will not plant now," reached after consideration, is also a perfectly good judgment. Please handle the consideration of planting seeds and the actual planting as separate decisions.
A Look Back Over About 12 Years Becomes the Material for the Next Seeds
Jupiter's cycle of about 12 years can be used not only for looking at the future, but also as a unit for looking back at the past. About 12 years ago, what trials did you make, what remained, and what disappeared? Within that look back, the material for the next seeds is sometimes contained. Among trials that disappeared, you can distinguish those that were simply too early from those whose direction itself did not fit.
A business owner's experience accumulates with the years. Reviewing that accumulation in units of the cycle itself supports the quality of the next decision. A horoscope is not something that predicts whether a business will hit or miss; it is a tool for organizing the history of your own judgments. Choosing seeds on top of that organization is the original way to proceed with the judgment called seed-planting.