There are 2 things you’ve probably discovered as a business owner – whether you have an offline or online business.

And – if you’re just starting your business, you’ll discover it soon enough!

Business is slower during certain parts of the year.

Instead of it freaking you out or sending you into an affiliate marketing frenzy–which let’s be honest no one will like, let’s steer in a different direction.

How to “go with it” and use the time to improve your business.

Of course – it’s different for different industries, but in general we all experience some slowing at very easily predictable times of the year.

I’m curious…have you identified those times for your business?  Have you made a plan for when things natural shift to low gear or stop all together?

If so, I challenge you to take a proactive approach to these times – own those times, make decisions about those trends before they make decisions for you.

Humans go on vacation in the summer. It’s what we do.  We’ve been trained since childhood that summer means vacation.

Humans also celebrate big holidays and everything pretty much goes out the window during said holidays – can you say from Thanksgiving through New Years?  Ok – definitely Christmas to New Years.

Humans often have children – and want to take that last vacation, move to a new home, and settle all before September.

So – now we have 3 times of the year we might see a slow down just based on general human behavior alone.

Acknowledge it and decide how you want to react.

Here are some quick questions to ask yourself right now:

• Do you launch new products or services during those months?
• Do you start a campaign to get new clients during those months?
• Do you schedule vacations or off-work time during those times?
• Do you push through and still try to do business as usual?
• Do you focus on planning the next quarter?

How To Structure Your Year

Of course, it’s up to you… but let me give you a quick insight into how I like to structure my year…

1. December is catch up and holiday month. No new big launches.  We might do a promotion or 2, but in general this is giving month. Do fun blog posts, maybe host a fun, content only or interview style webinar. Key: think about giving.

2. June-July is okay to launch but do it early so that you don’t overwhelm people with other things going on in their lives, weddings, kids getting out of school, early summer vacation. Key: make it fun.

3. August – August is often another downtime month.  You can certainly start a launch during the month and there are exceptions to the type of products/offerings that people buy during this time. Key: know your audience’s buying patterns.

But back to you. Regardless if these times are slow in your business or not, I’m sure there are at least 2 times during the year where you know that there is some sort of an ebb in sales.

1. Identify those times that will be naturally slower for your business.
2. Plan downtime in advance.
3. Decide which times to use as vacation and which to use as clean up.

Further reasons why you should expect, plan, and leverage the ups + downs

You need breaks.  You can’t work at the same full speed ahead intensity 24-7 365 days a year. So allow the natural slow periods to take time off.

You’ll have much needed maintenance time to spend organizing your business.  If you have 2 months during the year where you can devote to cleaning up your systems or any other messes that have happened throughout the last launch, creation of a new site, maybe your office is in shambles–use it!

Your customers need a breather too!  Stop selling to your customers and audience at regular intervals.  Don’t bombard them with offers every single month.  Building in times throughout the year where you do no-promo offerings like – content only webinars will pave the way for more sales when you do make your big paid offers and launches.

Do you have natural highs and lows in your business throughout the year?  If so, have you turned any into your “vacation” or “maintenance mode time”?

And if you don’t experience any fluctuations in your business… lucky you, but I still challenge you to find pockets of time throughout the year where you – take a break and recharge, update outdated systems in your business, or even go into your creation cave for a few weeks.

And here’s my personal reminder to use these business rest periods – the reason I look for the spots where I can step back:

Leave a comment below sharing how you spend your downtimes – or how you’ll plan some into your next 6 months!