Have you ever met a farmer who was surprised by winter?
Me neither. Farmers know winter is coming, and they know about when it'll get here. They don't plant in December and hope for the best. They plant in the spring, work all summer, and put enough away in the fall to carry them through.
Most small businesses have a winter too. Yours might be January. It might be August, or the week after tax season. You know which month it is. You've been through it five years in a row. And somehow it still sneaks up on you every time.
Here's the short answer. Your slow season isn't a revenue problem. It's a timing problem. You fix a timing problem by paying for the slow months while the busy ones are still going.
A good business with a bad calendar
This week, Bob runs a wedding and event photography business.
From April through October, he's booked every Saturday and editing every weeknight. In January and February, the phone doesn't ring. Every fall the business looks rich, and every winter it looks broke.
Bob's business is doing fine. Over a full year, the work pays the bills. The trouble is the calendar. His money comes in over seven months, and his bills show up all twelve.
That gap is the whole problem. And it has a number on it.
What does a dead month actually cost you?
Most owners can tell you what a good month costs. Very few can tell you what a dead month costs, and that's the number that matters here.
Your business has two kinds of costs. Some only exist because the work is happening. When Bob shoots a wedding, he pays a helper, buys gas to get there, and orders the client's album. When there are no weddings, those costs go away on their own.
The other kind keeps coming whether anyone books or not. Rent on the studio. Insurance. Software subscriptions. The payment on his camera gear. And the money Bob needs to pay himself so he can live. Call these your must-pay costs. They don't care that it's February.
For Bob, a dead month costs $3,500. The busy-season costs aren't in that number. It's only what still shows up when the calendar is empty.
If you only figure out one number this year, make it this one. Pull up a slow month from last year, and go through what went out. Cross off anything that only happened because work came in. What's left is your dead-month number.
How much cash should you keep on hand?
You've probably heard you should keep three to six months of operating expenses in the bank. That's not a bad starting point. But it means very different things for different businesses, and "operating expenses" usually means a normal month, which is more than you need to cover.
Here's how I'd think about it instead. Your reserve doesn't need to cover a flush month. It needs to cover what you can't quickly cut.
Start with your dead-month number. Then multiply it by how long your slow season actually lasts, and add a cushion. Some businesses take in about the same amount every month, and they can get by with less. Seasonal businesses need more, and so do businesses where customers take a long time to pay, because the dry spell is longer.
Here's Bob:
Item
Amount
Must-pay costs per dead month
$3,500
Slow season (January and February)
2 months = $7,000
Cushion (one more month)
$3,500
Reserve target
$10,500
The cushion isn't extra for the sake of it. Bob's year doesn't flip straight from busy to dead. November, December, and March are thin months, and a wedding can always get pushed. The extra month covers the slow stretches on either side of winter.
If that number makes you a little nervous, you're in good company. JPMorgan Chase Institute's 2025 data found that the median small business holds about 18 days' worth of cash. That's less than three weeks of bills if the money stopped coming in. In Atlanta the median was under 14 days. Starting from a small number is normal. Staying there is the part to fix.
Where the money sits matters too. Your reserve belongs in a separate savings account. It should be easy to get to, but not so easy you'll spend it. If it's sitting in your checking account next to everything else, it isn't a reserve. It's a mood.
How do you pay your future self?
Knowing the number is half the job. The other half is building it before you need it.
Bob has seven busy months to build a $10,500 reserve. That's $1,500 a month:
$10,500 ÷ 7 busy months = $1,500 a month
Make the transfer automatic. Set it to move the same day every month, the way a bill would. If moving it depends on you remembering, it'll happen in March and May and then quietly stop around August.
If $1,500 a month feels like too much to start, start smaller and raise it. A smaller automatic transfer beats a bigger one you keep meaning to make.
And while you're setting up that transfer, think about taxes. You make the money in July, you spend it in August, and then the tax bill shows up in January, right in the middle of the slow season. If you put tax money aside during the busy months the same way you build your reserve, one habit takes care of both problems.
What will you do with the quiet months?
The money is the first part of preparing for a slow season. The second part is deciding ahead of time what the slow season is for.
A quiet month you didn't plan for feels like a crisis. You refresh the inbox and wonder whether something's wrong. A quiet month you did plan for feels like a break. Same calendar, completely different winter.
So give it a job. Bob's slow season is a good time to service his gear, update his website, and line up marketing for next year's booking season. It's also a good time to take his own vacation, since he spends every Saturday from April through October at someone else's party. When the slow months have a plan, they stop feeling like something is broken and start feeling like part of the business.
Your busy season is paying for the whole year
Every owner with a seasonal business knows the feeling of a great October turning into a scary January. The business didn't change between those two months. What changed is that October's money got spent like it belonged only to October.
It doesn't. Busy season isn't your profit. It's your paycheck for the whole year.
So here's your one thing for this week. Go back to last January, or whatever your slowest month was, and write down what came in and what went out. That's your gap. Once you have that number, you're not guessing about winter anymore.
Watch the full episode here: EPISODE 10 . And if you've ever been profitable on paper and broke in the bank, start with Episode 8: Watch Now.