How to Approach Your Busy Season with Ease and Fulfillment

Your busy season doesn’t have to be chaotic! In this short video I share two strategies that can lead to a busy season (or launch season) that is filled with more ease and fulfillment. You can apply these strategies to way more than a busy season… they’re two of my faves. For your best experience, watch the video! If reading is more your thing… the video transcript word for word is below…

Let’s get to it…

A lot of the clients I work with are seasonal business owners. So they have an off-season and an on-season, a busy season and a slower season. Clients who don't have a seasonal business, a lot of them still often have kind of ups and downs with like the busy-ness factor. So maybe they are launching services or courses or masterminds throughout the year. So they'll have a launch season or a launch time that inherently feels busier because it has more tasks. So I was talking to a client recently who’s coming up on what is going to be her busy season, and what I was hearing was a story that is potentially going to trip her up a little bit. We talked about it, but I want to share these two concepts with you, if you are a seasonal business owner or someone who has launches throughout, that might help you approach them in a different way so that they are not quite as crazy because I know a lot of the time a seasonal business if you're in the wedding industry or you have a shop who has you know, holiday hours that get kind of bananas, it can feel like a lot to manage.

So in talking with this client, she brought up that her busy season is coming up and that then kind of described what the busy season looks like. So a lot of the times when people describe their busy season, they're like, “oh like it's going to be crazy. I'm going to be running around. I'm going to hardly get any sleep. Like the time is just… it's bananas during my busy season.” Now if that is what you're telling yourself that is the surest way to make sure that the busy season is bananas. So if you want it to be bananas keep on keeping on and have it be a bananas time. If you want it to feel a little more manageable, not so crazy, a little bit more under control… I want you to think about this story type that often shows up for people (not often… always) in business and it's a tricky one because we don't always recognize it. So this story type is when it's something that at first glance seems like a fact so I will have people say to me like “well Julie, it's just a fact” and they either say that literally, or they like say it with their eyes like “come on Julie, this is a fact.”

And so an example are things like it's busy season or there's a pandemic or the market is saturated. These are all facts. I will not argue about the pandemic. It's here. You do have a busy season if you are in something like a wedding industry that has variations with climate, your market might indeed be saturated so the story that's holding you back isn't the fact - it's the meaning that you then attach to the fact. So it's busy season. So it's going to feel chaotic and crazy. Okay, busy season FACT, chaotic and crazy the story/meaning you're attaching to it that's going to hold you back. Same with a pandemic. “There's a pandemic. So no one's going to buy” Some people won't, some people will. So what are you attaching to it? Same with the market is saturated. So there are these different stories that we attach to factual things.

So if you're telling yourself that prior busy seasons have been chaotic and you go into this one the same way, history is going to repeat itself. So if you want it to be different if you want your busy season to not feel so overwhelming, you want to look and say well what can I do to have it not feel that way? What systems can I put in place, what changes can I make. Can I just up front say “I don't want it to be that way. I don't want it to be chaotic.” Okay, which then takes us to the next strategy.

So the first one is identifying that you've got a story going on and that if you say the busy season is going to be crazy and chaotic and hectic and overwhelming and all the things, that it will be. So then the next thing to do is say well then how do I want it to feel? How do I want my “on season” to feel? You can even decide that you're no longer going to call it your busy season because “busy” in itself has meanings and connotations and it's loaded. It's a loaded word. So maybe you don't call it your busy season, you call it your on season, your active season, whatever you want to call it and then identify “well how do I want to feel in that season of my business” Identify the feeling, think about what that looks like for you? What do you actually look like as a relaxed wedding planner? As a relaxed farmer? As a relaxed florist? As a relaxed brick and mortar owner who has a holiday shopping season or a Valentine's Day or whatever it might be.

And when you identify how you want to feel, identify what that actually looks like for you then you try to embody that. You think what do I need to do to make that a reality, what systems do I put into place. How do I show up at work? Do you I already go in with a frazzled mind? No, do I kind of calm myself down a bit take a look around? And whatever strategies are going to work for you once you've identified that feeling that's then where you want to go. Now.

You might be saying I'm not buying it like the busy season is busy. So I'm not denying… Again, this is that fact I'm not denying that parts of your business might be busier, more full, more robust and that those parts might actually be more exhausting than like, January and February let's say, depending on your industry, so that can be true. But it's also just thinking about how are you approaching it? And what are you telling yourself before you even get to it about how it's going to be. If it's negative, if it's something you're not looking forward to, you're going to want to make those shifts.

So quick review… The story is not the fact - the story is the meaning that you're attaching to it. And then identify how you actually want to feel. And this can be applied to things beyond being a seasonal business, beyond having an off-season and an on-season. It can be applied to anything like I was saying with the example of there's a pandemic or the market is saturated or something like “I don't know how to do that.” You might not know how to do whatever it is that you want to do next right now. But then what are you saying about yourself, about the chances of meeting your goals, about the chances of making a pivot? What meaning are you attaching to “I don't know how to do that.”

So think about that. Let me know what you think. Those of you who are heading into your busy season your on-season, maybe do some journaling about this and get down on paper how you want the season to look and feel different. Good luck!