Most things in life move in seasons. For me, that includes my business and work/life balance. In this episode, I’ll talk about the seasonality of my business, the way I’m feeling right now, and how my life balance shifts with the seasons.

I have built my business so that there’s a busy season, a rest season, and gearing up, and during some months we work more than others. I’ve tracked my cycles so that I do my creative work during certain weeks and keep my client calls during the other weeks. I allow my team to shift responsibilities as our work evolves, and I encourage them to make sure they’re resting and taking their vacation time.

Where are you noticing cyclical or seasonal changes in your life or business? How are you implementing changes within those?

We cover ALL of this in the “Get Your Finance Sh*t Together” self-study course at confidentmoneypodcast.com!

Join our community at confidentmoneypodcast.com where we’ll share tips and resources, and you can suggest topics for future episodes.

Enter to win a free strategy session with me!  Leave a 5-star review and include your IG handle to enter. We draw the winner at the beginning of each month. 

FTC/Affiliate Disclaimer: By using some of these links, at no extra cost to you, I may earn a small commission or referral fee, which helps me continue to produce content like this, support my business, and my team.

DISCLAIMER: I am not a financial advisor and this is not financial advice. My podcast is for educational purposes and is my personal opinion only. To make the best financial decision for your situation, please do your own research and if needed, seek the advice of a fee-based, fiduciary.

Music credit: Neon Fairies by Wolves 

A Podcast Launch Bestie production

Hey, welcome back to the confident money with Caitlin Magnuson.

We are continuing this little, I'm going to call it an intermission season.

And this is really where I'm talking through things that I've learned as

a business owner over the past year.

And part of that is because there's a seasonality to my business.

Right.

And that's actually what I want to talk about today.

Not just in my business, but in my life, personal relationships, whether it's.

Menstrual cycles, everything that goes along and I get really reflective

kind of around, you know, the made June, July time in non pandemic years

when tax deadlines are not extended.

The first part of may is when I have my birthday.

It's when the hectic time from tax season feels like it's a little bit

in the rear view mirror, things are caught up that may have been delayed,

that weren't time sensitive and.

The season is really starting to, or the seasons have really started

to change outside weather-wise.

And that means that my husband, who bless him is inside during most of the winter,

outside of doing all the snow maintenance and anything else, he handles most of

the cooking and the animals and kind of keeping our household running, not kind of

keeping our household running during the winter while I have a busier work season.

I don't think I cooked a single breakfast for myself for maybe.

From February through the first part of may.

And like I said, with that comes a lot of reflection.

And so for me, when things start to slow down, when I have more mental

bandwidth, I end up reflecting on things like I'm doing today in this episode.

And realizing that for me, the more that I embrace the seasonality.

And the cycles that come and go in my life.

And the more I try to live within those instead of fighting against

them, the happier that I am.

So for me, those seasons can kind of vary that may look like I have kind of a busy,

tired, exhausted season for just going to call it that from February through April.

Or we could even say January through April, Then I come into a period of

rest and play and joy and lightness, and then a period of productivity and

the early fall and then back into busy.

And so for me, embracing these cycles, which also happened

to fall in line with our.

I feel really good for me.

So I know a lot of us maybe that are business owners or that work corporate.

I noticed this when I was in corporate as well, but I think a lot of us feel like

we should ignore those changes, right.

You know, maybe your business isn't seasonal, but maybe you still have

energy changes throughout the year and acknowledging those and noting those and

working with them is really important.

So for me in the winter time, in that busy season, I probably work five to seven

days a week and a little bit longer day.

And I probably start sometime around eight or nine.

I work till sometime between six and seven and I take normally two to three, one to

two hour breaks during the day in between.

So I work in chunks.

I don't set a timer a lot of times.

I I just sit down, I get done what I needed to get done.

I take a break to go eat, to go walk, to go work out, to go do

absolutely nothing sometimes.

And that works for me because I have more things that have to get done.

And so for me breaking my work week and my work day up,

like that works better for me.

And then normally at least a couple of times a month, I try to take an

entire weekend off that's because I don't want to work a 12 hour day solid.

I don't think that's realistic.

I don't enjoy doing that.

And I don't think that it provides the best quality of work for our clients.

So what that looks like when we start to come into the season that we're

in right now, that season of ease and play is there's a little bit of

catch up, of course, but for the most part, it's very little weekend working

sometimes no weekend working for me.

And it's maybe five hours a day during the work.

Instead, I'm outside.

I am gardening.

I am caring for the animals.

I am walking.

I am getting sunshine.

I'm taking over a lot of the household chores because we live on acreage and

there's maintenance that comes with our property that my husband goes to do.

So there's a divvying up for us of household chores, you know,

redistribution of responsibilities based on who has capacity.

And that's what happens during the majority of the summer and those workdays.

I can take an entire day off in June and July and August.

I can take a Tuesday off.

I can take a Thursday off.

I can take a couple of days in a row off, no big deal.

And we're getting to the point where I could take longer than that off,

but there's just so much more flow.

So much more E.

Projects are caught up, you know, we do.

That's when we do all of our fun things, right.

That's when we create a lot of content, we try to get ahead on blogs.

We have a lot more creative energy as a team.

And as myself available to us to tap into, it's less of the doing, doing, doing to-do

list and more of the, where can we create?

Where can we innovate?

Where can we inspire and have fun?

And like what comes up when we're out playing?

Because all of us, I think, as a collective, I know myself specifically

have some of our best ideas when we take a nap, when we start.

Speaking of, I don't know if this helps anyone here, but one of my goals for the

month of may through September is to see if I can nap at least 50% of the days.

I'm not quite on track I'm at about a quarter of the days, but I have

found that in the late afternoons with these days being so much longer, I'm

sleeping less at night and a nap between three and four 30 is just sublime.

So for anyone that can highly recommended, I do not really nap in the winter or

early spring at all, but this time of year, when the days are so long, it is

wake up, go about my day, do my things.

So again, taking that drop in, I'm going to say deadlines in overflow, work in

may, June, July, August, and using that time a to rest recuperate, to nourish.

Myself, both physically and mentally and allow our team to do the same, but

it also is my time where I innovate and I become even more inspired.

And I prioritize not being on the computer all the time, which is ironic.

Cause I'm recording this on the computer right now, but my time is limited on here.

I get on, I work in bursts.

I'm done for the day or I'm, you know, go, I'll do it in the morning and then

I'll go do all my outside stuff and then we'll come back in the heat of.

Work a little bit on the computer move forward.

Like we have things to be doing.

We have stuff to be enjoying and I love it.

And our clients are doing the same.

And then that lets me roll into September and September for me is when

I feel things really start to pick up.

I think a lot of us, you know, you have kids, your kids are going back to school.

We're starting to feel kind of the change of the seasons.

Fall is approaching for some of us, again, depending on where you at.

And you're starting to feel that winding down energy, or at least I feel it

as a winding down energy, we're maybe getting our ducks in a row for clients,

for year-end we're doing anything that we can to prepare for tax season.

We're onboarding new clients because without fail September

and October are two of our biggest ones for bringing clients on.

Because again, I think people are in.

Get things prepared, do things Headspace, especially with just how, you know,

our schedule falls with back to school being in September or even August.

That's what everyone's kind of in gear, right?

You're gearing up for year end.

You're gearing up for black Friday.

You're gearing up for whatever it is and taxes, frankly, start to become

something that's on the top of your mind.

So for us and for myself, September is when.

We're not crazy busy, but we're still picking up.

We're picking up steam.

We're doing all the things that we can.

It's a little bit less creating, a little bit less innovating, a little

bit more you're doing, but also balanced out by trips by quarterly

estimated taxes by vacations, by, you know, having some balance there.

I would say it's a really equal balance of play and work as opposed to the season

before of ease in play, where I'm going to say it's a little bit more play with.

And that prepares us to then roll back into that busy season where it's

more work having to prioritize breaks, needing to take care of ourselves.

And for me, during that busy season, I order a lot of meal kits.

my husband is great at following instructions for things like

that, but it makes it really easy to put meal kits on a substance.

They show up.

He does the cooking.

We're both then fed we're nourished.

We have a variety of food that we're eating.

We're not eating the same thing over and over again, which is something

that I'll absolutely fall into.

I will eat waffles for dinner for days if I don't have another

option and well, that's great.

And I love breakfast or dinner.

It's not sustainable for me.

It doesn't make me feel energized.

Um, for me, it's also something that.

I have noticed I don't drink nearly as much, especially I don't drink

hardly at all during our busy season and really sparingly the rest of the

year because it's, it keeps coming down for me personally, to feeling

energized and feeling like I can rest and feeling like I can sleep.

And so I've become a lot more selective with, you know, when I'm

choosing to consume alcohol and realizing that, you know, this is

something that I'm doing, just because I feel like I need it to relax.

Or numb out or is this something where Nope, I felt my feelings.

I really want an amazing strawberry freckled cider.

Those for me come from two really different places.

And it used to be something that I was absolutely guilty, especially

during busy season of numbing out and having two or three drinks so that

I could ignore the stress ignore.

It was really bad when I was working in a corporate position, as well as running my.

And being able to take that pause and be more cognizant

of why I'm making decisions.

And I find that with the computer, right?

If I'm getting on check a Voxer or check Instagram or check slack,

I think so many of us do this.

Why, why are you doing that?

Do you need to be doing it right now?

Did you just check it 20 minutes ago or an hour ago?

Do you have a business set up where you need to be responding on an hourly basis?

If you don't.

Can you go take a break?

Can you close your computer?

Can you set some boundaries?

Can you update clients?

Hey clients in this season, we're here.

We're checking in.

Someone's available every day, but we're also enjoying the

shit out of our lives right now.

Like there's a time and there's a place.

And February through April, it's all hands on deck.

The rest of the year in particular, the summer, I encourage everyone on our

team, including myself to take a break.

Use your vacation time.

I don't expect full-time hours during this time of year, because a lot of

us work more than full-time hours.

Not that it's required.

You don't have to be full-time to be productive, but there's a lot to get done.

And there's a lot less and a lot fewer stressful deadlines that have to be

managed during the rest of the year.

So wherever you can acknowledged the seasonality in your life, in

your business, in your family, in whatever is coming about, even

in your cycles for how you feel.

And I noticed that for myself, And I either I've read some on

it, but I noticed my energy levels change throughout the month.

I have one week out of the month where I tend to be a lot more creative.

I have one week where I'm really drained and I have two

weeks where I'm just average.

And I'm working to try and make sure I'm tracking those so I

can plan my calls accordingly.

If I'm doing calls, I don't really want to do any calls on

the weeks that I'm creative.

Those are my content creation.

My podcast creation my blog topics like anything, you know,

we're content, our course ideas.

All of that is coming from me on those creative weeks.

The fewer calls I can have the better to let that really flow.

I want to be doing calls on the two middle weeks.

Not the low energy week or I want to be doing as little as possible and just

getting the things done that have to get done and not on that creative week.

Those two other weeks for me are where it's at.

And so finding that and acknowledging that and giving myself permission, I

don't have to be available five days a week, every week of the month for calls.

My business is not set up that way.

It's not set up that way intentionally.

Cause for me, while I love doing calls, they can be really draining for me.

And so prioritizing when I do them, how I do them, is there someone else on the

team that would be better to be doing them and planning our resources accordingly?

And that's something that I look for in all of these seasons, right?

I'm constantly assessing where could we be better allocating our resources

on the team what are things that I'm doing that I don't need to be doing?

What are things that someone on the team is really fucking good?

That I'm not, or that maybe someone else isn't, or that maybe I didn't expect them

to be doing that, but they're really good.

And I've seen that they have a proclivity for it.

Cool.

Let's have a discussion.

Let's talk about rearranging priorities, rearranging responsibilities, so

that everyone on the team is able to perform to their best and have as

much work satisfaction as possible because there, I think there's nothing

better when it comes to work than.

Being in your zone of genius and knowing that you kicked ass and you were

given the tools to show up to do that.

So did you, were you empowered to do the things that you love to do that you

want to learn where you empowered, where you challenged, where you stimulated?

And there's a really good balance between being bored, being stimulated

and being overwhelmed or overworked.

And so constantly finding that back.

Within our team within ourselves, as our clients change and evolve and grow as

our team changes and evolves and grows.

We're constantly rearranging.

I look at that as a seasonality or a cycle of sorts, right?

We bring on clients, clients may have new needs.

We may evolve.

We may change what our staffing looks like to meet those needs.

We then, you know, reshuffle responsibilities accordingly.

And.

It might, we might realize that, oh, we have a hole.

We have a gap in knowledge here.

Do we need to be hiring this?

Someone else wants to learn this.

Like, who's feeling like this is a shit yeah.

Thing for them.

Is it not a shit thing?

Cool.

Can someone else do it or is it just kind of a task?

Can we divide it up between us so that not like we don't all

have to do only the crappy stuff.

And what I did recently is I had everyone rank their top seven to 10

responsibilities that they do regular.

In order from, I love this too.

I don't love this.

And to list out anything they were wanting to learn or anything, they

were wanting to step more fully into in their role this year.

And for me, that was really helpful because it lets me go, okay, I think

I know where everyone falls in what they like to do, what they're good at.

But there were a few that were like, oh, you really liked doing XYZ.

I didn't know that it wasn't something you were doing regular.

Let's see how we can work that into what you're doing.

And let's see.

And I think this is important if we're adding 10 hours of work to someone's

plate, let's see what we can take off of their plate, because we're

not all about just adding and adding and adding and adding it's adding

and substituting it's moving around.

It's finagling the is so that everyone feels like they have a challenging

workload without being overwhelmed.

And when I say challenging, I mean like intellectually stimulating,

that's always the goal, right?

Cause there's a lot of repetition in our field and accounting and bookkeeping.

There's a lot of novelty as well.

Where can we be finding the happy medium?

And some people want a little bit more of the boring and some people want a

little bit more than novelty, but most people want some combination of the.

And that's, I've been really interested to see how that changes within our

team, within myself, especially as I continue to step back into a founder

role into a creative role and be less and less than the day to day.

It's really interesting to me to see who rises up into leadership roles

that I wouldn't have expected to see who really loves doing the tech

stuff, that they may not have been hired for and to plan our resources.

Of course.

So

there's not a correct takeaway, except for the fact that I noticed a really

big difference in my personal and my professional life, when I am able to

acknowledge the seasonality and to plan accordingly, like having those meal

kits come in like rearranging household chores, duties, responsibilities,

et cetera, during my busy time, like prioritizing play and train and sunshine

time and time spent in my garden.

All of those come with a seasonality.

And by the end of.

I'm burnt out on the sun.

I'm burnt out on being outside all the time and playing in the water.

Those things that I'm loving.

And so like just rolling in right now by the time it's September.

That's something that I'm looking forward to slowing down.

I'm looking forward to being outside less.

I'm looking forward to snow and more sleep and darker days.

And that gets to be okay.

We get to look forward.

We get to enjoy the season we're in of life of weather of business and appreciate

it while also being ready for that next seasonal change when it comes through.

And for me, Embracing that and understanding that it's coming.

Right?

Cause sometimes I'm, I'm just, I'm tired or like, oh, I'm

really ready to get outside.

I get antsy, you know, by the time it's may or the end of April, I

am done, I am done with taxes.

I am done with deadlines and I am ready to just take a break.

And so acknowledging that, telling myself, Hey, I know this is coming.

Hey, I know that my schedule changes and communicating it with clients and

with the team makes it so much easier to run my business, to live a life

that feels full, that feels exciting.

And that feels nourishing.

I'd love to hear from any of you that comment, make sure if you're listening to.

That you are leaving a review.

If you love what you're listening to and make sure to leave your Instagram

handle or a way to contact you.

We've had several awesome reviews recently, and we haven't

been able to enter them for a chance to win a call with me.

We do a drawing for a call once a month because they didn't leave their

Instagram handles or contact details.

So if you loved this episode and you love what I'm talking

about and you want to hear more.

Please leave a review.

They're super helpful.

And I would love to hear a tag us on Instagram at confident money podcast.

I would love to hear from you aware, are you noticing or implementing cyclical

or seasonal changes in your life or your business, and have you found that

it has helped you feel like you are.

Less exhausted, more aligned and more capable because it certainly has for me,