Surviving The Summer As A Small Business
Unless you work in a seasonal business, the summer can prove a testing time entrepreneurs and business with up to 3 months of holiday in some parts of the world.
If you work in the education industry as I did for many years, you understand exactly what I mean.
Even as a professional coach, the summer is a challenge as clients are spending time with families, travelling or working overtime covering colleagues who are also doing the former.
So what can an entrepreneur do to ensure the summer doesn’t become a barren desert in your income?
4 strategies that have ensured I no longer have to worry about my summer income.
Case Study
I’m going to use my language academy as the perfect example as the academic year runs from September to June with students taking a 3-month break, restarting courses late September.
This caused me a lot of trouble at the beginning so I was forced to innovate to survive.
1. Factor in average income throughout the year
One of the biggest game-changers in my language business was determining my average monthly income and adjusting it over an 8-month year instead of 12.
This helped two-fold;
It raised the bar so I became more committed to reaching a higher goal.
It completely reframed how I managed the business’s finance from thinking annually to monthly.
It’s like averaging your returns in the stock market over time but what’s most important is choosing a relevant time period otherwise you risk skewing the data. In my case, I needed to determine my monthly income.
2. Create summer specific activities or one-off events
Most language academies I know overcome their summer drought by running summer schools or activity weeks. As an online academy, that was more challenging.
We did partner with other entities who ran similar initiatives and that helped but it wasn’t all smooth sailing as partnerships don’t always work out. Let’s just leave it at that…
What did work well for us was running our own summer-specific programs online. Some examples of these include: training for tourism and tour guides, exam preparation training or catch up for students who needed extra tuition.
We discovered this by talking to our customers and understanding how we could help them. Once we highlighted some common threads, we created the courses and invited them.
The summer can actually be the perfect time for some people to use your service, you just need to offer what they need.
Create evergreen or seasonal products
Having worked with some very successful entrepreneurs I’ve learned the importance of having an entire ecosystem of products and services around the core solution. This really has been a huge difference I’ve noticed between amateur and professional entrepreneurs.
The following may be common knowledge now but pre-covid era, these concepts were less familiar. In any case, they drastically helped us increase our average monthly revenue and ensure we had income during the summer:
Video courses - we provided in-depth training on specific skills you students needed.
Community - we created a space to connect learners, share knowledge, expertise and provide training.
Membership - provide a yearly membership with member benefits and perks.
Workshops - the summer is a great time for short trainings and workshops for people to upskill without committing too much time.
You may be thinking these are services which would also require your presence. True, but they can be productised and/or delegated.
You could choose some to be evergreen and upsold throughout the rest of the year or they can be seasonal like hot chocolate in winter for an ice cream shop.
Change prospective clients
Most entrepreneurs are dreaming up new products and solutions for their existing clients which makes sense but being a successful entrepreneur requires more creativity than logic.
When we changed our ideal customers from students to teachers, we changed our summer income forever.
Instead of battling to convince students to continue studying instead of going to the beach, we began creating solutions for teachers who finally had the time during the year to upskill And dedicate some time to their professional development.
Why providing trainings and workshops combined with e-learning material, we created a necessary solution for a client who was in need of our support at this specific moment.
Training teachers also enhanced our reputation with our existing students and therefore strengthened the brand image as well. A double win.
Action
We’ve seen how I summer-proofed my language academy so now I challenge you to read this article again and through the lens of your own business, being open to new and different solutions that you hadn’t previously thought of or tried.
Tell me what you discover.
Wishing you the absolute very best,
Stefano