Here we are during the final week of June and I’ve been hearing from so many of you that the last few weeks have been rough.
I’m talking about sales dwindling, more people than usual ghosting you in the DMs, and you just can’t seem to put your finger on WHY this is happening.
Are people just not interested in your course anymore?
Do you need to revamp your entire sales and marketing plan?
Is it time to burn everything down and start your business from scratch?
Well…no.
In today’s episode we’re talking about what the Summer Sales Slump is, why you’re experiencing it, and I’ll give you 3 things you can do to turn things around.
You’ll walk away feeling refreshed, inspired, and most importantly – READY to take action.
So, let’s get started.
My name is Caitlin Bacher, CEO of Scale With Success®, and I’m on a mission to help course creators all over the world grow their business in a way that is profitable and scalable. I’m sharing revealing insights about what it really takes to scale an online course business to millions of dollars per year. Join me here to discover the tough decisions I’ve had to make, the biggest failures I’ve had to bounce back from, and the learnings that emerged every step of the way. I’m so grateful that I have the chance to tell you everything right here on Scale With Success®: The Podcast. Let’s get started.
Today we’re talking about what a Summer Sales slump is, why you’re experiencing it, and 3 tangible things you can do to turn things around.
A Summer Sales Slump is frequently characterized by a decrease in revenue during the month of June – but, it’s SO MUCH more than that and the unexplainable decrease in sales is just the tip of the iceberg.
There’s also a feeling of overall malaise that comes with it – uncertainty about what’s to come, random thoughts about burning the business down and starting from scratch in a completely different niche, needing a life coach, becoming a life coach – and to top it all off the kids aren’t in school so you’re navigating a new schedule with summer camps, family trips, and of course the dreaded “summer cold” because apparently your immune system didn’t get the message that flu season is OVER.
It’s a lot.
Culturally, we see summer as a time that we “should” be relaxing and living our best lives, which only adds to the general discomfort that you’re already experiencing because it feels like “you’re doing summer wrong”.
Well, let’s put a stop to all that. If you’ve been feeling down in the dumps this summer this episode is here to give you some tangible things YOU can do in your business to turn things around.
#1 Recognize that “perfect” is a lie.
I think a lot of people believe they need to become a perfect version of themselves in order to get the results they want – but, that’s actually a form of procrastination.
Will you ever be the person who wakes up at 5am every morning, does a perfect yoga session, a perfect meditation, and then perfectly writes in their perfect journal for 60 minutes with their perfect pen about perfectly meeting all their goals?
Perfect is a lie and waiting for conditions to be “perfect” is the perfect way to never get anything you want out of life.
You don’t need to be perfect to grow and scale a million dollar online course business – you need to be willing to be IMperfect…to make mistakes, learn from them, fail, pick yourself up, learn from that, get a small win, make another mistake and on and on.
Last year was one of the HARDEST years I’ve ever had in business – even harder than the year before when I basically wanted to quit my business altogether. I had to make difficult decisions that ultimately left some feeling disappointed, upset, and confused. I had to let go of people, beliefs, and strategies that no longer served me. It was brutal and for the first time in my life, I DIDN’T know what to do next.
I remember one Saturday afternoon I was having a tear-filled conversation with my husband and he said something that triggered a complete change in my perspective and made me realize that if I was ever going to reach the levels of success and impact I wanted – I had to allow myself to enjoy life – even when things were hard.
Because getting to the level of success and impact I wanted – was going to be hard – and unless I could reframe the experience of doing something hard – I would never have the mental stamina to get where I wanted to go.
In that moment, I became aware that all these years, I wasn’t allowing myself to have fun or experience joy until I overcame whatever business challenge lay before me. But, the problem with this approach was that the level of success that I had and the level of success I was trying to achieve was filled with challenges that needed to be overcome. Like, all the time and even if I did overcome one challenge, there were plenty of others ready to be discovered.
So, I had subconsciously set myself up for a life without joy – not because I wasn’t capable of experiencing joy – but, because I wasn’t ALLOWING myself to have it.
#2 Start experimenting.
If people aren’t buying your course it’s possible that you’re tired of selling it in the exact same way over and over again. If YOU’RE bored, your audience can probably tell and you need a creative intervention.
Sure, maybe you want a week to lay around and do nothing, but if you’re like me – then you actually enjoy having a creative business project to work on. Sometimes when sales plateau or even dip we think we need a massive reinvention – but oftentimes that is not the case.
Even a short project – just a few weeks – can have a massive impact on your business revenue and really get your creative juices flowing.
Maybe you want to take the next few weeks to finally build your Profitable Sales Engine™, so 30 days from now you have the whole thing up and running – generating revenue for your business with or without you.
Maybe you already have a Profitable Sales Engine™ and you want to run a fun summer marketing campaign to generate buzz for your online course and increase enrollments. If you’re already inside Scale With Success® Accelerator, make sure to ping me in the community because I already have some ideas for this!
#3 Give yourself some grace.
I know you’re a chronic over-achiever, but everyone – and I mean everyone – has ups and downs in their business. You can’t force anyone to buy and bringing that level of desperation to the internet will actually repel people.
As a business owner, it’s your responsibility to manage your emotions and if that means starting therapy, then you need to do that. You won’t grow your business any faster by beating yourself up and in fact doing so will just slow things down – and don’t beat yourself up for beating yourself up…I know how this works!
So, what does giving yourself grace look like to you?
For me, it’s acknowledging that mistakes are unavoidable and failure is never permanent. It’s allowing myself to feel joy, even when things feel hard. It’s allowing myself to rest, even when there’s more work to be done.
The faster you want to scale, the MORE grace you’ll need to give yourself.
Let’s recap three things you can do to turn your summer slump into a surge:
- Recognize that perfect is a lie.
- Start experimenting.
- Give yourself some grace.
I appreciate you being here and tune in next week for another episode of Scale With Success® – The Podcast.
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Today’s episode is brought to you by Scale With Success® Accelerator — an online course designed to help you generate launch-sized revenue without lanching. If you want to learn MORE about our proven method for success, click here to watch my free masterclass. See you in there!