Winter’s Wisdom: How Bad Weather Days Can Support Your Business (And Life)
When you worked for an agency or non-profit, snow days (or other non-life threatening bad weather days) were a beloved day of rest.
You would sleepily check your email at 5am to see if you had to go into work. After refreshing your email for the 50th time, you’d breathe a sigh of relief to get the great news: you had a cherished day off to work from home, spend with your loved ones, or just relax.
Oh, how times have changed now that you are your own boss in a post-pandemic world.
It’s hard to use bad weather days for rest or fun. You may focus on the lost wages that come with canceled sessions. If you have a full schedule, it can be a headache to get everyone rescheduled. Virtual sessions are a good alternative, but you still may be juggling logistical challenges if the bad weather impacted your childcare or transportation.
Snow days are the most common bad weather days in my neck of the woods. Even so, I still find myself feeling a mix of frustration and relief when they roll around.
My attitude towards snow days has changed over the years since starting my practice. Historically, I would freak out at the lost income. Or feel intense (but guilty) relief because I was overworking myself.
Subsequently, I shifted key aspects of my business so that I could focus on the benefits of this downtime.
Instead of stressing, I now use snow/bad weather days to assess and refine my business.
Here’s how you can do the same.
7 Ways to Use a Snow Day (or Bad Weather Day) to Support Your Business
1. Rest
It can be so easy to want to use bad weather days to crank out tasks, paperwork, insurance billing, and the like. From now on, whenever there is a bad weather day, I invite your first consideration to rest. (Assuming, of course, that is feasible for you.)
This day of rest can be seen as a gift – an unexpected day that you can relax and nourish yourself amidst a busy week.
With a meaningful pause, you can gain clarity about how our practice is going and what needs to change so it’s more in alignment with our unique needs.
2. Assess your fee structure & cancellation policy
Many therapists and healers worry about the lost income that comes with forced closures due to bad weather. If you’re still building your practice, those canceled sessions can also feel like precious income.
Instead of fretting, use your energy to strategically assess your business policies and fee structure.
Are your fees high enough to account for 1-2 bad weather days a year? Is your sliding scale eating into your bottom line? How about your cancellation policy?
In order to feel safe and secure in your private practice, I recommend a fee structure that allows for the unexpected.
When I’m doing my financial planning, I plan to work 42 weeks a year. You might be like ‘Ari, you take 10 weeks off?”. Yes and no.
By planning for 10 weeks that I’m not earning income, this accounts for mental health days, sick leave, vacation, snow days, and trainings. (Yup, most practitioners don’t incorporate training days into their financial planning).
3. Work on your copy!
Content marketing tip: Some of the most popular blog posts come from current events. People are already googling the big event, so your blog is more likely to come up in search results, especially if you write this blog for your ideal client.
Blog posts about current events offer value to our clients and show that we are in tune with their day-to-day experiences.
In the wake of a historic storm in 2019, I wrote a blog post for my therapy practice geared toward my ideal clients about how to take care of themselves after an epic storm. I’m fairly certain I set a record time between idea creation to publishing. However, I knew it would be important to offer specific and time-sensitive suggestions to my ideal clients as well.
You don’t have to wait for a bad weather day to write. There are plenty of current events that are impacting your clients every day.
Pay attention to what current events your clients talk about in session and consider creating a blog post or social media content that speaks to this.
4. Connect with your colleagues and referral network
Bad weather days can be a great time to look at your referral network to see who needs some attention. Just because you’re homebound doesn’t mean that you can’t have a meaningful connection with others. (Unless, of course, you don’t have power or internet.)
Use your bad weather day to send out emails, texts, or Voxer messages (in my case) to check in with your referral sources and close colleagues.
Networking isn’t about asking people to send us clients, it’s about building relationships and offering reciprocal value to each other. Consider sending your referral sources an interesting article, helpful resource, or even just a meme to let them know you’re thinking of them. You could simply ask how their practice is going and if they need help with anything. Consider scheduling a coffee date to catch up.
If you find your referral networking lacking, now is the time to do some strategizing about who you can reach out to next.
Consider using your bad weather day to identify some key potential referral sources and reach out to them in the medium (email, phone, social media) that feels best to you.
5. Catch up on clinical reading about your ideal client
Bad weather days can be a great day for you to brush up on your clinical/healing skills by reading books or articles that have been sitting on your shelf waiting for your attention.
Make yourself a creamy cup of coffee or tea, curl up under a blanket, grab your highlighter, and dive into the latest book about your area of professional interest. (Me: Applying IFS to addictive processes and eating disorders.)
Staying up to date on the latest research and best practices for your niche will make you stand out as a therapist or healer and build your confidence.
BONUS: If you want to combine tips #4 and #5, consider reaching out to colleagues to ask them for recommendations for a book, suggest a book they might like, or even start up a book club!
6. Finish that online course!
I am not the only one guilty of buying online courses that I don’t complete. It’s hard to hold myself accountable when no one else knows if I every complete a course.
Use this bad weather day to work on that course sitting in your inbox. Even if you only do an hour or two, you’ll feel a sense of accomplishment to have started.
If you bought a course that was to help you write copy, market, or grow your practice, dive right in! What a great way to uplevel your practice from the comfort of your own home.
7. Rest. Again.
I want to offer another gentle reminder that it’s okay to just rest during bad weather days. We know the importance of downtime and rest for any provider who is doing day-to-day healing work with clients, and that includes you.
A dose of downtime helps you feel happier and more present for yourself, your loved ones, and your clients.
If you find yourself doing one of the above tasks (blogging, reading, etc), make sure to end your day with a little bit of time to integrate all your learning and celebrate your accomplishments.
