In this episode, I share why a quieter summer doesn't mean something has gone wrong. Instead of seeing an emptier diary as a reason to worry, I encourage you to use this slower season to reflect, refocus, and choose one meaningful change that will set you up for a stronger autumn. And just as importantly, I remind you to make time for a proper break too.
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👋🏽 Hello! I'm Sumantha McMahon, and I've supported over 100 tutors and education business owners.
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To talk about the summer and the feeling that can creep in when your diary starts to look a little emptier than it does for the rest of the year. Now, of course, this won't be for everyone. Some of you are busier than ever over summer, running intensive courses or exam prep or holiday catch-ups and so on. And if that's you, enjoy it and maybe save this one for later in the year when things might slow down.
Sumantha (:
But for a lot of tutors, the summer brings a quieter stretch. The regular weekly clients pause, the school term ends. And the rhythm that you have built your week around suddenly loosens. And if you're not careful, that space can fill up really quickly with a very kind of low hum of worry, kind of like white noise. Where has everyone gone? Is this it? Should I be doing something? Should I be worried?
Sumantha (:
I want to offer you a different way to hold that quieter season because the story that you tell yourself about it changes everything about how you use it. And actually, if you want a more detailed episode of how to approach those summer periods or just generally the seasonality of tuition, just scroll back and you'll notice that I have a more in-depth episode about it. A quiet summer is not a sign that something has gone wrong.
Sumantha (:
It's a feature of the kind of work we do. Families go away, routines dissolve, the whole country exhales for a few weeks. That's the rhythm of the year and it has very little to do with you or the quality of what you offer. So the first thing I would invite you to do is to let go of any panic. Just put it down. It's not telling you anything useful, it's not serving you, and it's just taking up room that you could be using for something far better.
Sumantha (:
Because here's what a quieter summer actually gives you: it gives you room to think. For most of the years, you're in it, you're teaching, planning, replying, turning up week after week, with barely a moment to lift your head and just look at the business itself. The busy brain runs the whole show and there's no space to ask the bigger questions. And then summer arrives, and hands you that space on a plate.
Sumantha (:
What would you do with a few weeks where you could work on the business rather than in it? Not frantically, not by piling a giant project list onto your table and exhausting yourself in the name of being productive. I mean choosing one thing, one thing that would really move the needle towards the autumn that you want. This is really core to how I work, particularly with my one-to-one clients. We identified that one thing that knocks everything else over.
Sumantha (:
So maybe it's finally looking properly at your offers and asking whether they still fit the tutor you've become or the kind of schedule that you want. Maybe it's thinking about September and what you would love it to look like rather than just bracing for it. Maybe it's something much smaller, like deciding how you actually want your weeks to feel when term starts again. You don't need to do all of it. You just need to pick the one thing that matters the most and just give it a little bit of this rare open time. And amongst that, please also rest, the two are not in competition. And it's something I have to remind myself frequently.
Sumantha (:
Quiet a summer can hold a really good think about your business and a proper break at the same time. I don't know about you, but I still kind of feel that teacher hangover, even nine and a half years on, where I almost save tasks that I couldn't do during the year for the summer break. But I'm gonna try to do things differently this summer. You know, you're allowed, we're allowed to take both. We can be productive and we can take a break. So if your diary has gone quiet, I would love for you to stop reading it as a verdict and start reading it as an invitation. The work you do in these slower weeks, the thinking, the deciding, the small bits of designing tends to be the work that really shows up in the autumn when everyone else is scrambling. So the quiet isn't really the problem, it's actually an opportunity. And what you choose to do with it is entirely yours to decide.
