We asked our small business community, what do you do with the quiet weeks of August that pay off later in the year, or what’s one ‘boring but important’ job you always save for the summer lull?
42 small business owners have sent in their tips and task ideas for you to choose from. If you are going to do the admin, our advice is to do it with a side of ice cream.
For me, a freelancer with a small child: Don’t feel guilty, you have to take the two weeks off during school holidays (mostly August), after all, my family is my biggest supporter. Trying to use those little spare hours I have in August to update the website and portfolio, do some social media planning for the next 3/4 months (we all know the big C season is coming up, which means I will get very busy again). Slow August is the month for behind-the-scenes planning and maintenance.
For me, August is typically when I take time off. Enjoying the fact that everyone else is doing the same, so there is less “guilt” of not being around. In terms of working on my business, it’s a great time to audit everything and make a plan of projects I want to work on – updating the website, content plan, getting my accounts up to date and finalised (I’m not an early bird submitter!).
August is when we do some of our best work. Just not for clients. We started in July 2017, so late summer is almost our anniversary season. And over the years, I’ve learned that the lull is the only window where you can actually look at your own house. Client work is reactive by nature. The slower weeks in August are when I go back through every workflow we run, every repeatable process, and ask: is this still the best version of this, or did we just keep doing it because it worked once?
The thing I’ve seen hurt small agencies and small businesses alike is coasting on “good enough” systems during busy season, only to wonder why Q4 feels harder than it should. Going back through documentation, rebuilding the process that’s been held together with tape, those are the weeks that show up as smoother Q4 results. Not revenue-generating that week, but absolutely revenue-generating by November.
I focus on working on my business development, from finding more PR opportunities to updating my LinkedIn and activating my network, so that I can have a strong start to September. I also try to spend more time taking it easy and spending time with family and friends to get in the last bit of summer fun!
For me, it’s not necessarily quiet in August, but whenever it is, I get on with back-burner tasks, review and improve my systems, do a digital declutter, update my website, and do any business admin I’ve been putting off.
For working parents in the US, either back-to-school is in full swing, or there are a few long weeks when childcare can be hard to come by! (Camps are over!) If you’re lucky enough to have some quieter weeks at work, it’s perfect timing to take a long weekend, maybe a beach day or quick road trip, get an early evening ice cream, and savour some summer memories with your family. August is a great time to take stock of the mental load you are carrying and find better systems heading into the fall and new year. What can be outsourced? What can be done more efficiently? What simple system can reduce chaos in the home or office?
Working on my own case studies and testimonials. As a PR, my job involves promoting and building awareness and visibility for other businesses and organisations, but it often falls to the bottom of my list when it comes to doing it for myself! So I use any downtime over the summer to create case studies for standout campaigns I’ve worked on for clients and to collect testimonials that I can use in my own marketing and across my social media/website. Also, as a freelancer, I’m lucky enough to simply take some time off over the summer months and enjoy the flexibility of choosing to work this way!
I do a lot of website moves in August and at Christmas. Moving a website to a better hosting provider can increase speeds and reliability and usually save money. Doing it at this time of year usually sees less disruption for customers.
August is a “get it done” month in my business. I don’t hold any live calls with clients so that I can recharge and come back to serve them better in September. It also gives me the headspace to work on my own projects behind the scenes. This summer I’m launching Get Higher-Paying Clients: The Creative Authority Method. It’s an original audio series for experienced creative consultants who want to become known for their thinking, charge higher fees, and build a business where their prices aren’t up for negotiation.
I use August to spend time with my son; he is growing up fast, and I know in a summer or two he won’t be interested in talking to me! Even this summer, he may be venturing out without me a few times.
I have long wanted to be off for the whole of August – ever since my children were little (now 20 and 23), and I have never managed it! This year I’m going for an alternative – I’ve booked myself out as a housesitter somewhere beautiful for three weeks! I’ll be working but also exploring a different area of the UK, and I plan to spend a greater proportion of my time working on the business rather than in it. Creativity comes with a change of scene, so I’ve got high hopes. As for taking the month off – maybe next year!
For me in Australia, our quieter “summer lull” is usually December and January. That’s when I finally catch up on the post-it notes, half-finished ideas and designs I’ve been wanting to create all year but haven’t had the breathing room for. It’s less about switching off completely and more about using the quiet to get creative again, tidy the backlog, and build the things that will carry us into the next season.
Katie Lynch | Founder + Director at Katie J Design and Events
Destinations and journeys go hand in hand, or should that be step by step? The summer lull is a good time to review your financial road. One of the best financial tools to help with resilience, accountability and reducing stress and anxiety, think what your business Northern Star (destination) is in 12 months, then think what that journey activity needs to be to arrive at that endpoint. Finally, translate that sketch into what it means for cash-in and cash-out over time. Use that to monitor, review and assess your progress.
Spend time on your systems – the one that makes you the most money. And follow up with your past clients and people who root for you.
I always joke that “there’s no such thing as a slow week in marketing,” but I’m slowly entering my third year as a solo act, and a pattern is emerging. August is becoming my time to do a solid retro: look at the past year (or a shorter period) and assess what worked and what didn’t on three levels:
- Strategic: Am I still moving in the right direction?
- What worked (and how can I scale it) and what failed (and how can I avoid it)?
- Where is my energy going, and are there taps I can close?
The most common advice people get is to do this type of reflection around the New Year, but I think it’s a mistake. I trust my “holiday enthusiast” self to make a decision as much as I trust my drunk self to not eat that pizza.
I’ll be renewing my Cyber Essentials certification – yawn. But then taking some rare time off and indulging in geekiness of a different kind at the XRDS techno festival in Brussels. I’m a woman of extreme contrasts.
Not terribly exciting, but I sorted out my company accounts and am ready to send them to the accountant in September. It pays off purely because I don’t have to think about it and wrestle with endless receipts, invoices, etc., for a few months.
Marketing never stops, so there is no August lull for me. The weekly emails still need sending. The ads still need optimising. Projects like website refreshes come along, strategy development for Q4 and next year. For many of the businesses I work with, it’s business as usual; sure, there might be a few more holidays to work around for team members with kids. I don’t have kids, so I don’t typically take time off during school holidays either.
A lot of my clients go quieter in August, and in my early days, that actually meant August became my worst month of the year. Lots of work piled on, but nobody to ask questions of or make final decisions, leaving me feeling burnt out come September, whilst everyone else is refreshed and raring to go. I now make sure to take a bit of a step back in August whilst others are away, so I can spend some time on my business. This year, it’s looking at an alternative title that better represents what I offer now, and updating my website to reflect this, whilst also planning my next networking event.
I know backups should be and are a constant, but I make sure I’ve gotten through half the year with a big checklist of projects in Excel and had them safely squirrelled away in different locations.
We will be closing the office for the whole of August – giving our trainees fair warning – and I will be working on/completing the paperwork for our application for ICF accreditation. Boring but necessary!
My August is intentional. While everyone writes off the summer lull as dead time, for me it’s when the back half of my year comes together. Three things I save for it:
I keep networking – just more deliberately. Fewer groups meet in August, which sounds like a downside. It isn’t. Smaller rooms mean real conversations instead of quick hellos. I review my plans for the run-up to Christmas. The Q4 scramble is real – but only if you arrive at it cold. Spending August looking at what my plans are for Black Friday and pre-Christmas makes life much easier. This year, I’m launching a new IBS service in September, so I will be focusing mostly on that. And I finally take a proper break. Me time. No apology. You can’t run a good final quarter on an empty tank, and rest is a plan, not a reward.
Audit and plan for H2. IF August goes quiet, I go over what worked, what didn’t and why. Mapping out the rest of the year while keeping the audit outcomes front and centre. This reset is fantastic, especially if your business is a bit more seasonal and autumn tends to be busy.
Every year, I treat August as my “Freelancer New Year”. I’ve realised I make far better business decisions when it’s light until 9pm than I do in the middle of a grey January. So August is strategy month. Then I use the end of October through to mid-January to put the bigger changes into practice. It means winter feels like my Q2 or Q3 rather than my Q1 or Q4. By January, I’m already in motion instead of staring at a blank page, wondering what this year’s supposed to look like, which helps me avoid getting the NY ick.
I rest and enjoy the time with my little family. I’ve structured my freelance consultancy around taking three weeks of the summer holidays off. Most of my clients are juggling school holidays and getting away, so it works for both of us. My very busy times are September through to March, so that August downtime really pays off!
I give my Write The Book membership a month off attending Zoom calls and setting goals, and I replace that with an optional in-person retreat. August is a time for reading, writing and dreaming, not for Zooming, so we meet together with authors, eat ice-cream, write in a castle, and it’s all rather lovely. You’ll find us in deckchairs instead of at desks. The August lull used to get me down, but now I’ve built retreats into the schedule, I can’t wait to welcome people to the beautiful book town where I live.
I totally rejig my working day – early mornings and evenings – to fit around everything. The boring job this summer? Has to be sorting out my website!
For me, it’s not necessarily August, but any week where client work slows down a little. I try not to treat those periods as “time off.” They are my time to work on the business rather than in it. I review my financial goals, assess what’s working (and what isn’t), refine my client outreach strategy, invest more time in writing on LinkedIn, and plan for the months ahead. I also try to build better systems and workflows so that when work picks up again, I spend more time delivering and less time managing.
Use the stretch of quiet time to reconnect and check in with friends, partners, and clients. Set a schedule and method so it feels manageable. You might choose to do one message a day or three a week. And the message can be short while personalised by including what shared point you have with them and why you were thinking about them. Use the messaging format that works best to help you GID (get it done) – email, text, LinkedIn DM – or maybe a voice message by phone(!) or LinkedIn audio messaging. You may be surprised – and pleased – at the updates you get!
Sue Griffey | Global Career Strategist
I work through August so I can take my holiday in January. I hate the cold, so going somewhere hot straight after Christmas is worth working through August to get on top of all the stuff I need to.
For me, August is admin, decluttering, and resetting. I declutter my office, my laptop/emails, and delete what’s been on my to-do list too long and no longer serves. Admin-wise, I get my accounts out of the way. Reset prepare for Sept.
Judy Parsons | LinkedIn B2B Strategy Training For Sales & Marketing Teams
IF August goes quiet, I don’t fill the space. I use it to audit. I go back through the last three months and look at what actually brought in sales – not what I posted the most, not what got the most likes, but what actually converted. Then I do more of that, and I stop doing the stuff that felt productive but wasn’t paying off. I like to use any extra time to work out where my effort’s actually going, and make sure it’s going to the right things before the autumn rush.
I take time out to be with my family, visiting my parents, going to the beach, planning/creating content for my social media and email newsletters, updating my portfolio and website.
Filiz Taylan Yuzak | Founder, Marketing Mentor and LinkedIn Trainer
The boring-but-important summer job I’d always recommend is a proper systems reset. Quiet weeks are perfect for looking at the things that usually get ignored when you’re busy: inbox rules, enquiry follow-ups, client onboarding steps, folder structure, old spreadsheets, and the little admin tasks living rent-free in your head. It’s not glamorous, but it pays off later because September tends to arrive with noise. Having clearer workflows, documented processes, and a bit of automation already in place means you’re not rebuilding the plane while trying to fly it. For small business owners, I think the summer lull is less about doing more and more about making the next busy season easier to handle.
Puja Gurung | Virtual Assistant | Admin & Operations Partner
My ‘boring but important job’ over the summer is me! I add more downtime with friends, take extra classes at the gym, walk/hike more, and take a creative class. I basically give my brain the space it needs to provide clarity for what happens next in my business.
I often show up more live on Zoom, since it works for me with the kids around. Early mornings work for many people juggling business with kids. Don’t disappear. What you do in August builds towards autumn launches. Some have more time, some have less. Keep showing up and speaking directly to the people you support.
August is when I build the stuff that only pays off months later. In a corporate merch business, the fourth quarter is everything: holiday gifting, end-of-year client orders, and by the time that demand shows up, it’s too late to start ranking for it. So the quiet weeks are when I write the content and buyer-intent pages that need a running start with Google. The work feels invisible in August because nothing happens immediately. Then, in November, a page I published in the lull is the thing bringing in orders. If I waited until I felt the demand, I’d have missed the window to prepare for it.
August is a time when I consciously rest and refill my cup. As a wellbeing and personal development mentor, I’ve learned that sustainable success comes from creating space to recharge rather than constantly pushing forward. Fortunately, my business continues to run in the background through automated systems, memberships, and ongoing programmes, which allows me to step back without everything stopping.
One of the most important things I do during this quieter period is invest in my own growth through mentoring and coaching. It may not be the most exciting task on a to-do list, but sharpening my skills, deepening my knowledge, and gaining fresh perspectives always pay dividends later in the year. By September, I return with more energy, clarity, and inspiration to better serve my clients and community.
I’ve never really had a summer lull! Running salons and then working in mental health and community resilience with our festivals, summer was always one of my busiest seasons. But whenever business naturally goes quiet (usually January or February for me), I no longer panic and fill the space with busywork. I use it to rest, recharge and reconnect with my strategy. That intentional ‘power of the pause’ helps me show up with far more focus and creativity when things get busy again, and it’s actually become one of my most important business tools for preventing burnout and keeping me running in peak performance mode when it matters!
Why now, and not later?
Pick three or four from this list rather than trying to do all of them. Put them in your diary for August like you would any other commitment, because if they are not booked in, something more pressing will always take priority. The tasks that feel least urgent are often the ones that make the biggest difference once they are actually done. And don’t forget to take a break, and did we mention eating ice cream?
