134. Tending Your Business Through A Winter (aka Slow) Cycle

This year, I've noticed a pattern that my business slows down through the winter season. Instead of panicking like I used to in my first years of business, I am learning to embrace the slower pace, much like tending to a garden awaiting spring's touch.

This episode isn't just about roughing it through the quiet periods; it's about learning the seasonal patterns of your business to build resilience. This means taking a broader perspective on your year to build a plan. By identifying the cycles of feast and famine, we transform potential stress into a plan for empowerment and growth.

Kat HoSoo Lee is a trauma-informed Spiritual Business Mentor and host of The Rooted Business Podcast. She uses the tools of somatic and emotional alchemy to guide soulful entrepreneurs to approach their business as a spiritual practice. This allows them to cultivate businesses that are rooted in conscious values, ethical marketing and purposeful service.

Connect with Kat:

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This podcast is made possible with sound production by Andre Lagace.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 2:37

Hello friends. So today I want to talk about what a lot of people are experiencing, which is a dip in sales to the winter time, and I actually think that this is one of those cases where it's not actually tied to how you're marketing and, without giving away any sort of privacy, I also want to share bits of conversations that I've been having with my clients and also with my friends. So a little bit of context. I had been noticing in my own business a bit of a dip in sales, starting back in November, and right around mid-February I started feeling the stress of just watching my business savings that I had sort of saved up for these like ebb times. It's starting to diminish and luckily I am so, so grateful I have these two men in my life. I've got Andre, who is my business partner, and I've also got Sean, who is my wonderful husband, and you know they both said to me right around the same time like we've been through this before and if I remember correctly, you went through this like right around the same time last year and actually as soon as they said that, I reflected back and I was like, yeah, you're actually totally right, because I recorded an entire episode about this. I talked about how to shift some of your thinking when your business goes through these ebb and flows, and I talk about, like, some of the lessons that I learned from what that particular ebb felt like in the context of that ebb last year and that was episode 111. And that helped me just get out of that catastrophizing thought process that I was starting to vortex into.

Speaker 1: 4:30

I, too, am a human being. I, too, get dysregulated. Even though I do a lot of this nervous system work, that doesn't mean that I'm completely immune to this stuff. Right, like it is such a real experience to look at your bank account and be like, hey, the alarm bells are starting to go off. So what that encouraged me to do personally is to actually look at my business statements for the last couple of years. So I went back and I looked at my P&Ls those are my profit and loss sheets and notice actually, this is a cycle in my business. If I am talking about businesses being a cyclical experience, this is one of those cycles that my business naturally goes through, and I think that there's a couple of things that account for that. An important piece is that my own energy naturally goes down during the winter time I go into a bit of a dormant phase.

Speaker 1: 5:30

I don't feel like marketing. You know there's not a ton of consistency in how I show up in Instagram or on my podcast. If you go through and look at my podcast you can see that like some months I might have just put out like one episode instead of the usual weekly episodes, and so that's a big part of it for me. And what we're also looking at is what's happening in the broader world. And November people are starting to think about the holidays, and in December they're like fully in the holidays, and then in January they might be feeling the sting of some of the purchases that they made over the holidays, or travel plans that they had over the holidays. And then at the end of January January 31st is when W2s are all due, and so you know people are starting to look at their taxes in February typically.

Speaker 1: 6:24

And so until April comes around, my business and this is the sort of like logical explanation that I've come up with is my business goes through a pretty big ebb between November and, like mid-March, early April. So my question to you is have you identified any cycles like this in your own business and, depending on the industry that you're in, your cycles are going to look really different, right? You know, I have a client who's an accountant and he actually gets super busy during this time of year because people are, you know, really fantastically trying to find an accountant and he actually has to, like, turn people away during this time of year. So very, very different business, very different business cycle, right? And so that's the first question I want to ask you is what is the cycle of your particular business? Now, what this helped me do is, now that I know this about my business, it helps me tell my business hey, I recognize that what we're going through right now is an ebb in our, in our, I guess, productivity.

Speaker 1: 7:38

So then the question shifts to how can I love my business when it's in a dormant phase? Because it's so easy to love our businesses when it's abundant. But how quickly does that affection, does that love, turn to fear and scarcity and resentment when your business is not being, quote unquote, productive? And you know me, I'm always going to bring in a garden analogy here. But you know, when I look at my garden, I know that I can love my garden and it's just a little bit easier for me to like love my garden versus loving my business. It's easy for me to love my garden through the winter because I know that it needs to rest and as it's resting, it is composting and breaking down and consolidating.

Speaker 1: 8:26

So it made me think about okay, so if my business is also going through a winter, you know, and it just happens to also align with winter, when my own energy wants to slow down and consolidate, how can I love my business in this phase? And so the way that I have decided I'm going to love my businesses and this is from a conversation that I had with Andre today actually is we are pulling back on any sort of pressure to market this month and instead we're focusing on creating a website. It is embarrassingly long since I've had a full website. I actually think that the last time I had a full running website where I was like all the pages are done, I think that was back in like 2019. And so it is time, and so that's what consolidation is going to look like for me this season, as I'm like moving out of this winter cycle.

Speaker 1: 9:22

Right, I'm also thinking about how can I revisit my community, how can I figure out the ways that maybe my communication can be improved, is my communication still relevant? And so these are the kinds of questions that I'm asking myself as I'm in this cycle of ebbing and loving my business through this dormant ebbs cycle and I think that's another thing I want to talk about with you is let's normalize the ebbs in a business. I can tell you that I've been having really really tender, honest, vulnerable conversations with folks from people who have 100 followers to people who have over 50K followers, and let me tell you that we are all experiencing the same thing. I think part of that is because we all have very similar businesses. We're all like in the online coaching world, and so no-transcript, you know. I think that a lot of times we can look at oh my gosh, that person is launching something right now and they're doing such a great job. That marketing is amazing. They must be having a ton of sign ups, and we can compare ourselves and actually create the cycle of like, gaslighting of like. Why aren't? Why isn't my business doing any better, you know? And that's not helpful in these times. What's actually helpful is to, like, root deeper down into you, know who your community is, who you want to be serving. How can we create some sort of consolidation for you?

Speaker 1: 10:55

And I want to give you a peek into a conversation that Andre, who helps me run this business. For those of you who don't know who Andre is, he is I cannot run this business without him. He is my ex-boyfriend, actually, but he designs all of my graphics for me. He does all my website design. He is the producer for my podcast. He is the person that I go to to help me like poke holes in different controversial things that I might be wanting to say. He is like my biggest support.

Speaker 1: 11:25

I am not overstating it by saying that I cannot run this business without Andre, and so he and I had a really important conversation today and we were able to hammer in hey, this actually does happen every year, and what I mean by this is this ebbs cycle from November to about end of March. So if this is a pattern in our business, what do we want to do about it? Now, I get that it is so important to have a good understanding of being a good practitioner, being an effective marketer, but you also have to start looking at your numbers to feel truly empowered in your business. There is so much information in there. So what we did is we pulled up the PNL's for 2023. Like I said, we have a very, very transparent relationship. This may not be the kind of relationship that you have with your boss or your employees, but this is me and Andre.

Speaker 1: 12:25

We sat and looked at the 2023 numbers and discussed hey, if we are on track to bring in the same amount this year in gross revenue, how do we want to use that? And so we decided together that we are going to come. We decided together that we are going to cut back on contractor work. In real terms, that means that I am not hiring an assistant. I'm doing my own bookkeeping this year and Andre is taking on a lot more responsibilities, like posting graphics on social media, so that we don't have to hire somebody out of house. We also decided together that we are not going to take a raise, either of us this year, and instead what we are going to do is we are going to keep that money in the business account so we can go into November with more money than when we went into November of last year. So we can sink into this app. We can relax into this app and take the pressure off of our business when it naturally wants to slow down.

Speaker 1: 13:23

So I used to just for context, I used to keep three months of expenses in my bank account. What I'm finding, based on what this year is showing me as I'm going back and looking at old financial records, is that for me to truly have a winter in my business, that means that I need to have six months of expenses going into, you know, when winter literally hits. So again, we're working with the cycle right. Like the same way, it would be kind of stupid to try to grow a tomato outside when it's, you know, snowing. I'm thinking of it in the exact same way. Like I don't feel good selling programs when people are celebrating the holidays or worrying about taxes, and so I'm just going to take that off the table for a little bit and say the big pushes are going to happen starting in spring, and then I also see an uptick in revenue going into fall. So, like September, october, it's like a pretty easy time for me to sell in those months.

Speaker 1: 14:29

No, I want to just say that it's so easy to get fixated on the month to month and, as somebody who spent most of my adult life actually I'd say up until the last four years. I spent most of my adult life living paycheck to paycheck, and so it's a really, really easy groove for me to get sucked into, and it's actually a new skill for me to start thinking about life on a bigger time scale, on a yearly time scale, on a five year time scale, on a decade time scale and like. The reason why I think that's so important to say is because this work if you're an online coach, if you are working with a business that is cyclical, this work is inherently going to be a bit variable. Now that doesn't mean that it is less stable than a nine to five job, but where, in a nine to five job, you're looking to your employer for that security. We, as spiritual entrepreneurs, we now need to take that responsibility and look to ourselves for that security, and that doesn't mean we then push off that burden onto our clients. And so what I've identified this year is that my way of doing that is to create a big enough cushion so that I can ride the ebbs of my business with more resilience, because I've been smart with saving, of investing my money when my business is in a harvest cycle.

Speaker 1: 16:03

Now this is also another way that we can remain true to our ethics and our values when it comes to our businesses. So if you're here, it's because you want to create a business system that's profitable while still remaining rooted in sustainability and regulations, so that we can all you know, as this community, we can all raise this collective consciousness. And again, the same way it's so easy to love your business when it's doing well. It's so easy to hold on to those ethics when your business is doing well. It's when the business takes a hit, when it's going through an ebbs, that you are going to be put to the test. And you know this is when bro marketing feels appealing, because it promises fast results, even though you know that the reason why it forces people to sign up to work with you is because you are pounding on their pain points and positioning yourself as a hero to get them to take action.

Speaker 1: 16:56

By keeping my business ebbs proof, I am protecting my clients because I can fully step back and give them the sovereignty to come to the work when it most aligns with them, without needing to push or manipulate or force them into disregulation to get them to take action. And the reason why I'm having this conversation with you today is because I've been having this conversation actually over and over again in privacy with my clients and also with personal friends of mine, and whenever I see a pattern like that, I'm thinking, oh, there's got to be other people in my community who are feeling this as well, and so I just want to share this with you so that you could take a nice big exhale. It is okay, your business is going to go through ebbs and flows. That is a completely natural part of doing this work of aligning with cycles, and so, in the space of that, how can you create more empowered actions?

Speaker 1: 18:01

How can you use the evidence and the data from previous years and, if this is your first year in business, start taking notes right now, start jotting down concepts like this, so that you can maybe look back a year from now and be like, oh, I've been here before, this happened again, and so you can start tracking what are the months that are really good and easy to sell and are really productive, and what are the months that are naturally slow and what can I do leading into those good months?

Speaker 1: 18:39

And what can I do leading into the ebb months in such a way that I feel really empowered and so the waves don't feel like this big, gargantuan, massive, tumultuous ocean wave, and rather it can start feeling more like the ripples on a lake, even when the external stuff is shifting and changing. So I would love to hear from you. Let me know how this landed. As always, my DMs are open on Instagram or shoot me an email. Hello at cathosulicom. I love having conversations with folks, and so if this is something that feels kind of juicy or edgy or tender for you, I want to hear it.