DEMAND CREATION | PROFESSIONAL SERVICES
When I started consulting, someone I respected told me I might as well take July off.
Nothing moves in summer, they said. Everyone’s checked out. Save yourself the effort.
I believed them. For three years.
And for three years, July was exactly as dead as I’d been promised. I’d come back in August to a slow start and spend most of September digging out — wondering why the pipeline always needed rebuilding at the worst possible time, with no obvious cause and no fast fix.
What I didn’t realize — until my boss asked me one question that stopped me cold — was that I was creating it.
“What if you’re the reason July is slow?”
I sat with that for a while. And when I looked honestly at my own activity patterns, I saw it clearly: I started slowing down in May. Because I knew July would be dead. Because someone told me it would be. Because I’d decided before I’d ever tested it.
The slow July wasn’t the market. It was me.
So I ran an experiment. I decided July was going to be my busiest month — and I put a 90-day campaign in motion starting in May to make it happen. Five hours a week. Consistently. With the right people. Only high-payoff activities. Nothing that didn’t have a clear purpose.
July was busy. Not because the market changed. Because I showed up when everyone else checked out.
And then I noticed something that made me smile: most of my competitors had also taken the summer off. They’d bought the same story I had for three years. Which meant I had a wide open field — better access, less noise, more time from the decision-makers I was trying to reach — for exactly the months everyone had told me were worthless.
I’ve never gone back.
I still take time off — but on my schedule, throughout the year, not because someone told me July was dead. And every week, regardless of the season, I protect five to six hours for key relationships and high-payoff business development.
That’s it. That’s the whole system.
The Assumption That Creates the Reality
Here’s the thing about the slow July myth: it becomes true for everyone who believes it.
When enough professionals decide summer is dead and check out accordingly, summer becomes dead — for them. The activity stops. The outreach stops. The content stops. The conversations stop.
And then September arrives and everyone collectively decides summer was slow because of the market.
It wasn’t the market. It was the assumption.
The professionals who reject that assumption don’t work harder in summer. They work the same five to six hours they protect every other week of the year. But those hours hit differently in July — because the field is wide open and the buyers are more available than they’ve been since January.
Your Competitors Are Going to the Lake
When your competitors disappear in July, the buyers in your market don’t stop thinking. They start thinking more.
Summer creates margin. For your clients, for your prospects, for the decision-makers in your network who spend Q1 and Q2 in back-to-back meetings and finally have room to breathe. They’re more accessible. More reflective. More willing to have the longer conversations that don’t happen when everyone is slammed.
The Q1 and Q2 version of your ideal buyer is a person trying to get through the week. The July version is a person thinking about the second half — what’s not working, what needs to change, what they’d do differently in Q4.
That’s your conversation. And most of your competitors aren’t there to have it.
You can be at the lake too. You just have to protect five to six hours before you go.
What Five to Six Hours Actually Looks Like
This is not a productivity lecture. It’s a math problem.
Five to six hours a week of protected, disciplined business development effort — maintained through June, July, and August — produces a Q3 and Q4 pipeline that your competitors will spend October trying to build from scratch.
Here’s what those hours look like in a summer week:
One or two meaningful conversations. Not coffee for the sake of coffee. A specific conversation with a referral partner, a warm prospect, or a relationship you’ve been meaning to deepen — with a clear purpose and something of value to bring.
One piece of visible content. A LinkedIn post, a short article, a perspective on something happening in your market. Something that keeps you present in your buyers’ world while you’re delivering client work. Fifteen minutes and a point of view.
One trigger-based outreach. Someone in your network just changed roles, announced a growth initiative, or posted something that signals a challenge you solve. A two-paragraph message that leads with relevance, not need.
One introduction. Someone you’ve been meaning to connect. Two people in your network who should know each other. The introduction that costs you five minutes and builds goodwill with both of them.
Four things. Five to six hours. Every week.
Not heroic. Not a sacrifice. Disciplined.
The Ninety-Day Window That Changes Everything
Here’s the math that makes this urgent right now specifically.
Activity today becomes conversations in thirty days. Conversations become proposals in sixty. Proposals become revenue in ninety.
Which means the campaign that produces a busy July starts in May — or it doesn’t produce a busy July at all.
We are three weeks from summer. The window to set up your second half is open right now. The professionals who use it well don’t feel September coming. They built something in May and June that made September irrelevant.
The ones who wait until August to start thinking about it will be having this same conversation in October — wondering why Q4 feels like it needs rebuilding, with no obvious cause and no fast fix.
June 9th — Build the System That Makes It Run
On June 9th I’m running a free live working session — Why Your Referrals are Inconsistent – And What to Build Instead with the entire focus is showing you the strategy that makes those five to six hours count.
Not random activity. A designed Relationship Operating System: the referral partners who generate introductions whether you’re slammed or slow, the content strategy that keeps you visible while you’re delivering, the outreach rhythm that ensures you’re in the right conversations at the right moment — throughout summer and beyond.
One working session. Free. Live. You leave with the system built before summer arrives — not the intention to build it later.
One week away. Two sessions available — morning and afternoon.
REGISTER FOR JUNE 9 — PRODUCTIVE PROSPECTING LIVE MASTERCLASS — [LINK]
Reserve your seat before the week gets away from you.
If you’re a fractional or professional in Kansas City — there’s one more conversation worth joining this Thursday.
SolutionsXChange is June 4th at 11:30 AM CT — a virtual working session on the upstream/downstream question: where in your client’s lifecycle are you actually showing up, and where do you need to be?
SOLUTIONSXCHANGE — THURSDAY JUNE 4, 11:30 AM CT — [LINK]
You don’t have to give up your summer. You just have to show up to it differently than everyone else does. The field is wide open. Most of your competitors just don’t know it yet.
