The season is over. The crews are home, the harvest is in, and the phone has gone quiet. You got through another one. In a business that earns most of its year in a few busy months, that takes more planning than anyone outside it sees.
The quiet months feel like a break, and you have earned one. They are also the only time the business can change. Once the rush starts there is no room to fix anything, so next season runs the way this one did, problems and all.
Every seasonal business keeps its own calendar. For a fire crew or a winery the off season starts now. For a tax practice it starts in May. The window works the same way for all of them.
Six questions, and you can answer every one from memory.
- What went wrong this season that you promised yourself you would fix once things calmed down?
- If no money came in until next season, how many weeks could you keep paying the bills?
- When will you line up the money to start next season, before you need it or after?
- Which of this season's people are coming back, and what do the ones who are not take with them?
- Who besides you knows how to get the business ready for the rush?
- If you sold the business this winter, would the new owner know how to run the next busy season?
If the second question took more than a moment, the rest of this piece is about that gap.
The busy months pay for the year
Most small businesses do not have much cushion to begin with. The JPMorgan Chase Institute looked at nearly 600,000 of them and found the typical one could keep paying its bills for about 27 days if the money stopped coming in. A seasonal business has to get through months, not weeks. You still pay rent, insurance and the loan when the phone goes quiet, and you keep paying the people you cannot afford to lose.
The start of the season is the hardest stretch. You need fuel, parts and people before the first invoice goes out. An owner who plans for that in the quiet months can arrange the money on their own terms. An owner who waits until the week before takes whatever is on offer.
The people go home
When the season ends, the crew goes home. Some of them come back. Some do not, and what they knew about the customers, the equipment and the way the work really gets done leaves with them.
Swings like that are normal for small employers. The JPMorgan Chase Institute found that about six in ten saw their payroll jump and drop from month to month. In a seasonal business that swing is the whole year. Every spring you rehire, retrain and hope the right people come back.
Then there is the plan for the rush itself. When to start hiring, who to call first, which work to take and which to turn down. In a lot of seasonal businesses that plan lives in one place, the owner's head. If you could not work next spring, who would start the season?
The same mistakes, every spring
During the season nobody has time to fix anything. You patch it and keep going. In the quiet months everyone is tired, and the problems stop feeling urgent. By spring they are forgotten, and the team makes the same mistakes in the first busy week.
That is how small losses turn into a habit. We wrote about how they add up in Which Jobs Made Money. In a seasonal business you pay for them at the same point every year.
What a buyer would see
If you plan to sell one day, a buyer will look at how the business gets through the off season, not just how it does at its peak. They will want to know who runs the busy season when you are not there to run it. We wrote about what buyers look for in For Sale By Owner.
Use the window
None of this needs new software or a big project. It needs the quiet months, spent on the business and not only on getting your breath back.
- Write down what broke this season before the month is out, while people still remember it. Ask your crew too. They saw things you did not.
- Work out how many weeks of bills you have to cover before the first paying job next season. Then sort out any borrowing now, while you still have time to plan it.
- Tell the people you most want back that you want them back. Write down what your leads know, so next season does not depend on who returns.
- Pick one thing that broke and fix it. Test it before the rush, not during it.
Start with the first question. Write the answer down this week, while it is still fresh.