August: Running your business through the school holidays without losing the plot
The six weeks of summer holidays can feel like a different country if you run a business and have children at home. The school-hours rhythm you’ve built your week around vanishes overnight, and suddenly you’re trying to answer customer emails with a small person asking what’s for lunch for the fourth time before 10am.
If that’s you right now, the first thing worth saying is that you’re not doing it wrong. Trying to run a business at full tilt during the holidays, with the same output as term time, isn’t realistic for most people. Once you accept that, the whole thing gets a lot more manageable.
Lower the bar on purpose
The founders who get through the summer in one piece tend to be the ones who decide, in advance, to do less. Look at your week and pick the two or three things that genuinely keep your business moving, the orders going out and the promises you’ve made to customers. Protect those. Let the rest wait until September, the tidying and the bigger projects you keep meaning to get to. It’ll still be there.
Work in the gaps you actually have
Forget the idea of a clear nine-to-five. The holidays are made of pockets of time, an hour at naptime, a morning when a grandparent / friend / family member takes over, the quiet after bedtime. Match the task to the pocket. Fiddly, brain-heavy work needs a proper run at it, so save that for the longer stretches. The quick admin and the catch-up messages can happen in the ten-minute gaps the day throws up.
Be honest with your customers
People are far kinder than we give them credit for. A simple note on your website, or a quick message to say you’re working reduced hours over the summer with slightly longer turnaround times, sets expectations and takes the pressure off. Most customers have lives of their own and will happily wait a couple of extra days. The ones who won’t were probably going to be hard work whatever the season.
Ask for the help you need
A childcare swap with another parent, a few hours of holiday club, a relative on standby, none of it is admitting defeat. It’s the same as any other business arrangement, a way of buying yourself the time to do the work. If you can plan even a couple of guaranteed working sessions a week, you’ll feel far more in control of the rest.
It’s also why we’ve been testing our own Access to Childcare pilot this year. Talking to parent founders made it clear that the real sticking point usually isn’t wanting childcare, it’s finding childcare that’s affordable, accessible and reliable enough to actually plan a working week around. The pilot has been about learning what that support needs to look like, and we’re hoping to run it again.
And when it all goes sideways anyway, because some days it will, try to remember that a slower summer isn’t a failed one. Keeping your business ticking over while you’re also raising children through six weeks of chaos is an achievement in itself, even if it never makes it onto a to-do list.
If the summer ahead is already making your shoulders tense, it can help to talk it through with someone who’s been there. Our mentors can help you map out a realistic plan for the holidays, so you head into September feeling steady rather than frazzled.
To book a free mentoring session, send us a message and we’ll set one up.
