Don't Wait Until August

The first time I ran Clarity & Confidence as a group course I made all the classic mistakes. I decided to launch it in September.

To me, September always feels like the business New Year and my mental model says that people will want to take their business seriously then.

But, what newbie me didn't account for was all the work I had to do before September to actually have people in my course. 

They weren't just going to magically appear, I needed to do marketing. Given that August is historically quiet with nobody paying attention to emails or social media, I should have started back in June or July.

And also given what I know now about my client cycle, I should have started planting the seed back in March or April.  

Instead, I didn't think about any of it until August. Right when I was about to go away with my family for three weeks. Oops.

So what happened? I panicked, and realized I hadn't planned my marketing around the fact that I wanted to be offline. And because I really needed that vacation, my marketing was pretty half-assed. The course didn't fill, didn't run, and I learned.

So I come to you in April, before any of this is a problem yet, to help it not be you.

Take 30 minutes in the next few weeks to do this:

Step 1: Define your September. 

• What do you want to walk into September with?

Be specific. A number of clients, a launched thing, a revenue floor. Write it down.

Step 2: Map your summer reality. 

• How much time will you actually have to work? 

• When are you away, and do you want to fully disconnect? 

• When are your clients likely to go quiet? 

• What does your historical revenue look like June through August, or if you're newer, what's your honest guess?

Be honest here about the mental load, not just the calendar.

Kids home changes your working day even if you don't go anywhere.

Clients going quiet sounds like a relief until you realize it also means decisions stall, projects drag, and invoices get delayed. 

A project slated to wrap in July can easily bleed into September because the right people aren't around to sign off, which means you don't get paid until then either. 

Summer has a way of taking more than you planned to give it.

Step 3: Find the gap. 

Put September next to your summer reality.

• What's missing?

If you want to be at €4-5k/month by September and you don't have that locked in yet, work backwards. 

If your typical consulting or coaching sales cycle runs around three months, you need to be having conversations now so work can start in June or lock in for September.

If your engagements are shorter, there's still time to bring clients on in May or June and wrap up cleanly before summer hits.

If you're planning a launch, when does it need to be built and marketed? August is the wrong month to be asking people to pay attention. If September is your target, your marketing window is May through July at the latest.

Step 4: The next 6 weeks.

• Given the gap, what are the two or three things that need to happen before summer properly starts?

Just start to map the non-negotiables.

Common gaps I see when people do this exercise:

• Things slow down more than expected.
  A project you thought would close in July doesn't, because clients are on vacation and can't sign off. The timeline slips and so does the payment.
• Social media numbers tank.
  Something that got real traction in February gets half the engagement in July. The algorithm hasn't changed; the audience just isn't there.
• The outreach you planned doesn't happen.
  You wanted to enjoy your time off (the whole reason you started this business), so the emails you were going to write and the calls you were going to make just don't. That's not a failure of discipline, it's the point of a vacation.
• You're not starting from zero in September, but you do have to put the burner back on.
  The pipeline that was warming up over spring went quiet, and restarting takes more energy than maintaining.

I didn't do any of this thinking my first year. Which is normal, as is learning the hard way —  in August, half-offline and half-panicked.

The good news is the exercise is simple once you actually sit down to do it. September always comes, you might as well decide what you want it to look like.

If you do the exercise and realize the gap is bigger than you thought, that's exactly what the Clarity Intensive is for. Learn more here.