Transcript
Speaker: Welcome to the Business Flow Formula Podcast, a podcast where I, Erica, talk about the behind the scenes business issues and how to overcome them. Here at Signal Operations, we help business owners understand the signals that their business is sending them through their finances, marketing, team members, are just general business needs.
Speaker: Something that I've been chatting with my finance clients about with lately is the slow season. Every business has this and every business is going to go through it regularly. Whether you're in a food service industry or business to business or retail, there's always slow periods and that's okay.
Speaker: Even though it feels awkward, it is okay. Today we're going to be chatting about the finance side of it, but stay tuned because we're going to go into the other sides of slow seasons and what to do when you're bored. And that's through marketing and people ops and those kinds of things.
Speaker: So when it comes to dealing with the stress of slow seasons, I think it's important to call it what it is. Call it what it is. It's a decline in revenue. It's a decline in profitability. That is stressful.
Speaker: Looking at that and wondering if your business is even going to survive this. Also call it what it is. Maybe it's a little bit of boredom. Maybe you're sitting there twiddling your thumbs a little bit or not really knowing where you should go next. Maybe you're spinning your tires, that kind of thing.
Speaker: And lastly, calling it what it is, feeling inadequate and honestly sitting with yourself and thinking that you've done something wrong, you're a failing business owner, or just feeling like you're not as good as that person that you see online, which comparison is the very thief of joy,
Speaker: but Anyway, if you run a service business, a creative shop, storefront, side hustle, you know what I mean. One month's lien receipts can feel like a punch to the gut.
Speaker: Today we're going to talk about why slow seasons hit so hard and how to protect your cash and your sanity and three practical things you can do right now to get through it. So why do these seasons feel so stressful to us as business owners?
Speaker: First, slow seasons feel stressful for these three main reading reasons. Money uncertainty, income income dips, but the bills don't. Sometimes they actually increase.
Speaker: And that gap can obviously trigger our worry buttons and those alarm bells are going off and are we going to be able to afford this? It also ah plays with our identity and self-worth, as I mentioned. For many, many owners, work does equal value and showing up in our business and also having that satisfaction that someone chose us to buy from and support.
Speaker: So when it slows down, we can take it personally. Again, that's okay. That is up to you how you want to process that, of course. But it does hit personally, professionally.
Speaker: Makes us feel a little inadequate. There's also the future fear of a slow month can make us catastrophize a little bit. What if the business doesn't build back up? What if it never comes back? What if the slow season is actually just the start of a slow forever and I'm going to have to close my business?
Speaker: Those feelings are very normal. They are survival wiring and useful for basic, basic risks, of course, but not for running a business. And the trick is to acknowledge that stress without letting it make you reactive and letting you sit there and start panicking.
Speaker: So let's move into a quick reality check here. Before we get tactical, let's pause and ask ourselves three direct questions. One, is this a pattern or new development?
Speaker: Do you have data about your typical cash flow across the year? Have you already tried some small fixes this week, this month, this quarter? If it's a seasonal dip, you've seen it before. You're not in a new crisis. You're just in a reoccurring cycle. And I suspect that you probably know that and just needed that affirmation a little bit.
Speaker: But if it's new, it can still be fixable without panicking. Either way, a few calm, structured steps will help you more than some anxious scrolling or anxious implementation of new business ideas that may or may not be fully thought out. Guilty of that myself, of course.
Speaker: So let's talk about the practical steps you can take now.
Speaker: There are three practical and immediate actions to lower your stress to improve your outcomes on a day-to-day basis. Each take maybe an hour or less, um depends on how you want to do them.
Speaker: First, you're going to triage and stabilize your cash flow. List out your monthly fixed expenses and essential variable costs. Of course, we're going to prioritize rent, payroll, critical suppliers, and Then we're going to identify any non-essential spending you can pause for 30, 60, or 90 days.
Speaker: That would be subscriptions, ad spend experiments, and software that you can substitute for others that you might be using. That would mean like, can you switch to some free music streaming instead of paying for it? Or maybe you can downgrade a little bit. Maybe you can get rid of Amazon Prime for a while if you have that.
Speaker: And just try to buy as local as possible in the moment, that kind of thing. You can also call suppliers and service providers proactively, ask for some net terms, maybe some deferred payments, setting up a payment plan or some small extensions. I'm willing to guess that most of your vendors prefer flexibility to lost business. I know that I do and I know that when clients come to me and we have a discussion about how things are going, even though
Speaker: probably pretty aware of what's going on. I like to offer solutions and make sure that we can still continue to work together, mostly because I love my clients. Of course, this helps because when your uncertainty starts to shrink, when you control those payments, those small changes change your mental state.
Speaker: If you're not stressing about how you're going paying all of these bills and you're just worried about rent and payroll, I bet your stress will lift just a little bit.
Speaker: Going into the next practical step here is some short-term revenue plays. That means it's easy to implement, and but That means it's easy to implement, but also really easy for your clients or customers to understand what's going on.
Speaker: So offer a limited time-bound promotion to your best customers, or if you're brick-and-mortar store, perhaps it's for all of your customers for a certain amount of time, maybe over a weekend or a week.
Speaker: Keep it simple. A bundled service or small discount for prepayments or even a referral reward. Having a referral program is a pretty easy way to change something in your business and also have all of your favorite clients feel a little bit rewarded for recommending you all the time.
Speaker: So that means activating your current clientele, maybe some new ones as well, but send an honest, helpful email. No spam, of course, just a clear offer and clear deadline.
Speaker: And yeah an example of this would be like a 30-minute consult call or here's a template that I made for you as my client because it's something that I'm testing. Would love your feedback.
Speaker: um or maybe you just want to get on a quick troubleshooting call with a client and see if you can expand your services at all with them. And you know your clients best, but you likely know that they really struggle in certain areas of their business or, again, brick-and-mortar food businesses.
Speaker: Perhaps the clients always want coffee at 7 in the morning, but they want decaf at 3 p.m. So switch to decaf halfway through the afternoon, something easy like that. Of course, when you try to implement so many revenue streams all at once, that is chasing too many revenue channels, and it's going to scatter your energy. So we want to make sure that you're staying focused on your energy and not spreading it too thin again. So those focused, honest offers tend to convert better in those slow times.
Speaker: And I'm not saying that these quick revenue add-ons are going to fix that slow period at all or um have it equal what it is in busy times. It's just going to help you through the month or two that you're in a slow period. All right. So moving on to the last one and that's reframing
Speaker: all right moving on to the last one and that is reframing and investing the time wisely. Financial stress obviously tempts panic marketing.
Speaker: Instead, use those quiet months for high leverage work, systems, documentation, productizing services, or even just learning. Do a customer experience audit. Call three of your recent customers.
Speaker: if you have the phone numbers, or call your recent clients and ask how to be better. How did the last appointment go? How did you find my service?
Speaker: Was there anything that I could have done better? Anything that you felt was lacking? This obviously, one, builds the relationship with that client or customer, but it might provide some really useful feedback for you.
Speaker: And then you can start implementing that slowly and making sure to be better and better.
Speaker: And i just want to toss in kind of like a like little sentence here around a mental reset. Slow periods really help us schedule short daily rituals with ourselves, whether that's a 10-minute walk five-minute meditation, just to reset our mood. Stress obviously clouds our judgment, and creating some type of small ritual can help restore it and get rid of those stress clouds.
Speaker: Moving on to a ah quick story of mine. um a client was running a small catering business um for a while. And with very clear seasonality, they supported typically the wedding season, which is seasonal.
Speaker: And then it would kind of maybe have a little bit of a holiday rush and then a quiet winter time. Of course, one January, she starts to panic, double the ad spend to get people to come and see her more often and just burn through it all.
Speaker: And so The next year, she tried something different, and she actually paused her paid ads, which I thought was a really interesting experiment anyways, and kind of created low-effort recipe kit um for couples or families or even corporate clients that wanted to have some team-building time.
Speaker: And with a simple check-in and a small discount for February and March bookings, that kit actually brought in some steady orders. And the outreach led to a couple new corporate bookings and a couple extra weddings that maybe um she wouldn't have had before and obviously replaced that ad revenue when she paused the ads. So it actually worked out for the better.
Speaker: For another client of mine who works in the marketing industry, she started offering quick 60-minute laser coaching sessions to help owners refocus their marketing efforts. So it was a relatively low investment for her and a low investment for her clients because it was just a 60-minute session, so no need to pay large amounts of money. out at once. It was just quick 60 minutes.
Speaker: And so everyone won in that scenario course, Revenue for My Client. And another business owner was able to refocus their marketing efforts and grow themselves.
Speaker: So moving into mindset, because that's a big part of my world actually is talking with my clients all around their mindset, whether that's finance mindset, business mindset, day-to-day positivity. um Here are three shifts that i want you to consider from scarcity mindset to contingency.
Speaker: Expect that variability and build small contingencies rather than hoping for constant growth. Switch from identity to role. You are the steward of your business, the face of your business, but it's not a scorecard. Mistakes and slow months are part of the job and quite normal, actually.
Speaker: And then I want you to switch from immediate rescue to a measured response. Urgency is useful, but panic is not. Give yourself some structure. Decide specific times for triage, outreach, and rest.
Speaker: If your stress becomes chronic or even starts to affect your sleep and relationships, get some help, please. Talk to an accountant about cash flow forecasting, a mentor or coach about strategy, or even a therapist about anxiety and dealing with stress. You don't have to fix everything alone. And over the years, I've built up my own support network from a coach with laser sessions for me, therapist for life, and yes, I do even have someone that I can talk to about my numbers, even though I am the numbers person.
Speaker: Before we go, i have one more checklist for you. I love my checklists. ah It's one-minute checklist that you can use right now. i want you to go and pull at least 12 months of income and expenses, but especially income, and highlight the slow months.
Speaker: Pause at least one non-essential expense for 30 days. I sometimes challenge my clients to just cancel all of their subscriptions except for like their accounting software and music streaming and see what happens.
Speaker: Send an email to your list or post on Instagram or Facebook, wherever you are online with an offer. Whatever that offer is, whether it's 10 minutes off ah laser coaching or 15% off in your brick and mortar store or a free coffee if you're a coffee shop.
Speaker: The slow seasons are obviously uncomfortable. I get it. Been there, done that. Even accountants and bookkeepers have slow seasons. but they are predictable and they are manageable.
Speaker: Small, steady actions beat frantic scrambling. So if you are needing some laser coaching, we do offer 60-minute sessions. Speaking of examples, 60-minute sessions that you can book right now at Signalember.com.
