Hi Reader,
The Chamber goes dark every July. No meetings, no events, just a quiet month before things pick back up in the fall.
My Netforce group still meets, but even that shifted for the summer. We're doing book club every other week instead of our usual format.
And my own business tends to follow the same pattern. July and August are typically slower. Clients are traveling, kids are out of school, everyone's attention shifts toward family and a little breathing room. It happens every single year. I could set my watch to it.
This year, I decided to do something different with that slow stretch. Instead of just riding it out and picking back up in September, I'm using the lighter weeks to work on the business itself, pricing, offers, messaging, systems, all the stuff that usually gets pushed to "someday." It's the kind of planning and structure work I'd normally tell a client to do before her next predictable lull, not during it.
At first I thought I was just being productive. Then I noticed something. These weren't four separate projects. They were the same project.
And here's the part I didn't expect. Because of that work, this July isn't actually as slow as it usually is.
The Weekly Edge
Every business has seasons. Not just the calendar kind, but the rhythms created by your clients' lives, your industry, and your own capacity.
Some months are built for pushing forward. Others are built for something quieter.
The problem isn't that slower seasons exist. It's that most of us don't plan for them. We brace for them, wonder if something's wrong, and then try to make up for them by staying busy.
This year, I tried something different.
Instead of asking, "How can I stay productive?" I asked, "What decision could I make now that my future self won't have to keep making?"
At first, I thought I was working on four separate projects.
Pricing.
Offers.
Messaging.
Systems.
But after a few days, I realized they weren't separate projects at all. They were all solving the same problem.
I wasn't creating more work for myself. I was removing it. Just not from this month. From next year's version of me.
Clarifying my pricing removed a decision I'd otherwise make every time someone asked about working together.
Clarifying my offers removed uncertainty from future sales conversations.
Tightening my messaging made every future piece of content easier to write.
None of it added something new. Every decision removed a little friction. That's when the real pattern showed up.
Capacity isn't created by doing less. It's created by making fewer decisions.
Busy seasons reveal your systems. Slow seasons build them.
Every decision you're making today is quietly shaping how much your business will ask of you next year.
Here's the part that surprised me.
I help clients simplify businesses all the time. Yet when I looked at my own business, I caught myself trying to make things more complicated than they needed to be.
Apparently we're all better at seeing patterns from the outside than from the inside.
That's not a flaw. It's exactly why an outside perspective is so valuable, even for people whose job is providing one.
One Small Move
This is where the season metaphor becomes practical. The slow season isn't just time, it's an opportunity to catch the decisions that quietly repeat all year.
Pick one decision you find yourself making over and over in your business, the same pricing question, the same scope conversation, the same scheduling back and forth. Write down what it would look like to decide it once, clearly, so it stops being a decision at all.
You don't have to solve it this week. Just name it.
What I’m Paying Attention To
Two ideas have collided for me this month, and together they've changed the way I've been looking at my own business.
The first came from our Netforce summer book club, where we're reading The Gap and the Gain. Like a lot of people, my instinct is usually to look at what's missing. What's left to build. What's still unfinished.
But as I started stepping back to look at my offers, pricing, systems, and content, something unexpected happened.
Instead of seeing everything I still needed to create, I realized how much I'd already built.
Once I stopped measuring what was missing and started looking at what already existed, simplifying became much easier.
I wasn't looking for more ideas anymore. I was looking for the connections between the ones I already had.
Around the same time, I picked back up The Miracle Morning. Hal Elrod talks about what he calls "isolating incidents," the idea that we often believe a single choice only affects that one moment.
The more I thought about it, the more I realized that's almost never true in business.
Pricing affects offers.
Offers affect messaging.
Messaging affects content.
Content affects conversations.
Every decision ripples into something else.
I'd been treating my pricing, offers, systems, and content as four separate projects.
They were never separate.
They were all connected from the beginning.
Maybe that's what slower seasons are actually for.
Not catching up.
Not getting ahead.
Taking enough of a step back to finally see how the pieces fit together.
Because once you can see the whole picture, it's much easier to decide what actually needs your attention... and what doesn't.
Most business owners think a slower season just means less to do. I'm starting to think it's the opposite. Slow seasons exist so we can make the decisions our busy seasons never give us time to make. Not decisions that add more. Decisions that make the business ask less of us over time.
This is something I work through with clients regularly, helping them see how one decision in their business is quietly shaping five others they haven't connected yet.
What's one decision in your business that keeps repeating itself? Hit reply, I'd love to hear it
Talk soon,
Lucy
P.S. My husband caught me working on my birthday and told me to stop, that I should just take the day to read instead. Which is funny, because I've been saying for months I'd love one weekday where I could read without feeling guilty about it. He remembered that before I did.
