🔒 How to Run Your Creative Business During the Summer Slump (or Any Slow Time)

Amelia HrubyWelcome to the Off the Grid Clubhouse. Thank you for being a paid supporter of the show. Let's get off the grid and into this super secret episode.

Amelia HrubyHello, and welcome to the Off the Grid Clubhouse. This is our private space for paid supporters of Off the Grid. Or if you're hearing it on the main feed, this is a preview of an episode that's exclusively for the folks who support the show with $5 a month or $50 a year through the Off the Grid Clubhouse. I am your host and Clubhouse convener, Amelia Freebee, and I am thrilled to be bringing you something special today in the Clubhouse. And I feel like I say that every time, but that's mostly because I try to do different sorts of things in the clubhouse.

Amelia HrubySometimes I answer questions from listeners. Sometimes I live build AI policies with my peers and friends. And sometimes I share workshop recordings like I'm doing today. So last spring I taught a class called how to run your creative business during a recession. And when I taught that class, people were just starting to notice that their businesses weren't making as much money in 2025.

Amelia HrubyAnd we were beginning to ask, like, are we experiencing a recession? Is The US economy or the global economy in a recession? What does it mean that we're all making less money even though the stock market is seemingly doing better than ever? Those were the questions that we were stewing in last spring, and I created this workshop to help folks grapple with that fact and to provide and guide some somatic strategies, some expense reduction practices, and offer a framework for business experimentation when things feel tight and contracted and challenging. So all of that is included in this workshop, and it is honestly quite wild to me to reflect back on how things were a year ago or just over a year ago and how they are now.

Amelia HrubyYou know? In the beginning of this workshop, I ask if we're in a recession. And now I feel very confident that the actions of The US president, especially going to war in Iran, have caused a global recession or and are going to have widespread impacts on supply chains around the world. I mean, it's already having those impacts. And I think they're going to be felt by folks in The US and across the Western world this summer as well.

Amelia HrubyMany of us are already feeling them. We're seeing gas prices go up, grocery prices go up, but I think it could get quite a bit worse. So I cannot change the state of the global economy, but I can offer you this workshop on how to run your creative business during a recession, or right now I'm calling it how to run your creative business during the summer slump. Because in addition to this recession and possible supply chain disaster that's coming our way, we're also entering the normal, quote, unquote, summer slump time, which is a pattern that many online businesses and creative businesses experience during the summer where they make less money. They have fewer sales and lower revenue during the summer months.

Amelia HrubyNow this is not true for every business. There are plenty of businesses that make a ton of money in the summer. If you're in a tourism business, if you're in a retail business, if you have a brick and mortar or a location, like, there are a lot of businesses that make tons of money in the summer. But for those of us who run online businesses and particularly who serve other businesses and business owners, the summer can be a pretty slow time. It's a time when people are not focused on work.

Amelia HrubyThey're focused on family and rest and play and beauty and nature and so many amazing things. And so they're not necessarily spending money on our offerings or workshops or whatever it is that we're up to. I'm here to say that that is normal. That does happen for many businesses in the summer, but it doesn't have to kill your business or your creative spirit. Just because things slow down doesn't mean they're over or done, but that also doesn't mean we have to deny the reality that finances may be tight or challenging in slow times.

Amelia HrubySo in this workshop, I share almost ninety minutes worth of grounding frameworks, self soothing practices, inspiring new ideas, and just general camaraderie that can help us all find a path forward through the summer slump, the slow times, or whatever the world brings our way in the season ahead. I am so thrilled to share the workshop with paid supporters in the clubhouse. You'll get to hear the first ten minutes or so of the workshop here. So if you just want a taste, if you're not sure if it's for you, you can settle in and hear a bit of a preview. But but if you really wanna go through it with us, if you want the slides and the dashboard and the whole thing, you will have to become a paid subscriber of the clubhouse.

Amelia HrubyIt only costs $5 a month or $50 a year. And I believe that this workshop is well worth that price. So if you wanna enjoy it, head to the show notes, become a paid supporter of the clubhouse, and you can enjoy this workshop and a ton of other episodes and workshops and resources and amazing things that I've created for the clubhouse over the past two years. So thank you so much for tuning into the show. Thank you in advance for supporting us through the clubhouse.

Amelia HrubyAnd now let's dive into your preview of this workshop on how to run your creative business during the summer slump or any slow time. Hello, and welcome to the recording of how to run your creative business during a recession or any slow time. I am recording this with a live class of attendees on 05/28/2025, but I hope that it can serve you whenever you are tuning in. A few things you might wanna have on hand as we move through class. So these are all optional, but I do recommend having a paper, or having paper and a pen, pencil, or marker.

Amelia HrubyYou're probably gonna want something to take some notes with, to answer some questions with. As we move through class, there will be times where we pause for reflection questions, and you might want to make a note for yourself during those times. You can also do that digitally if you prefer. I also recommend having a beverage or a snack with you. I have a cup of coffee next to me and a bubbly water.

Amelia HrubyHighly recommend hydrating and nourishing your body during class. I also recommend having any props you like for self soothing. If you like to have a stress ball or a fidget toy, if you like to wrap yourself in a blanket, if there's a way you can make yourself more comfortable, I invite you to gather that now, as well as anything that helps you be present in class. I have lit a candle next to me, which always helps me sort of stay in my body at my desk when I'm presenting. So these are just some invitations for things you might want to have nearby.

Amelia HrubyAlright. Here's what we're gonna get into today. I have created a very big presentation for this class. When I started building out the materials I promised you in the sales page, I was like, oh, cool. This could be actually an eight week course.

Amelia HrubyGot it. Got it. Got it. I'm a pro at deciding to cover many weeks of material in a ninety minute workshop. So what are we gonna cover today?

Amelia HrubyWell, here is our agenda. So first we're gonna have a little bit of recession real talk, which is mostly me just kind of level setting on, like, what is a recession? Are we in a recession? What does that mean? And then also tapping in a little bit with this idea of, like, being in a slow time.

Amelia HrubySo for this class, I've called it how to run your creative business during a recession or any slow time because all of us will go through slow times in our businesses, and I just wanna talk a little bit about what that means. There are many reasons it may be important if we're in a recession or not, but in your, like, actual day to day work in your business, the concept of a slow time might be a little more applicable, so we'll talk about that to start out. After that, I'm gonna offer a kind of self soothing menu of ways to tend to ourselves during this class and during stressful times, and then there will be opportunities to self soothe. I have a little slide that says here's your invitation to self soothe that will come up many times throughout this material. And then the two biggest portions of class are going to be these ideas for contraction and ideas for expansion.

Amelia HrubySo we'll talk about ways to sort of step back, spend less, sort of de grow your business during a recession, if you would like. And then we'll move into ways to experiment, to grow, to expand. So that'll be kind of this modulation we'll do together throughout class. And at the end, there'll be opportunity to share. And you might feel a little overwhelmed with how much I've invited you to think about and do, and so that'll come up if you would like.

Amelia HrubyAlright. That is our agenda, and slides like this will kind of guide us through throughout class of where are we at and where are we going. So we're gonna start actually with a really nice deep breath because I can feel that I already need one. So I'm just gonna invite you if you wanna join me with a lingering inhale and maybe a long exhale. And I'm gonna start us with a little bit of what I'm calling recession real talk.

Amelia HrubySo class is in session, we are beginning, here we go, friends. What is a recession? This is a question I was like, obviously, I know what a recession is. I've lived through a few of them, haven't I? And then I look at the definition, and I was like, interesting.

Amelia HrubyI guess there is a definition of this word. So a common definition or rule of thumb for a recession would be two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth. So if that makes your eyes immediately glaze over, basically what that means is that the US Bureau of Economic Analysis tracks the GDP and tells us whether the overall sort of productivity of a nation has declined or grown. Have we been more or less productive? In queue well and so that's how they measure a recession.

Amelia HrubyNow most of us here, I imagine, are not hanging out on the website for the US Bureau of Economic Analysis checking whether the GDP has gone up or down each quarter. I had never, in fact, done that until I was prepping for this workshop. So I think for most of us, when we mention a recession, what we're talking about broadly is a widespread drop in spending. That's another way of defining a recession. So if a community or a country is spending less, we might call that a recession.

Amelia HrubyAnd also I've just put here vibes and lack of trust. So a journalist, I think it was Keira Scanlon, invented the term vibe session a few years ago, which is this sort of felt sense of a community or society feeling like we're in a recession, even though the economic indicators suggest that the economy is growing. But also I was reminded this morning by a really great pep talk that Rachel Duncan from Money Healing Club recorded for Off the Grid, so you'll get to hear it in a few weeks. But she talked in that about how recessions are also about lack of trust. So we might call it a recession when there's just, like, widespread lack of trust of the economy writ large.

Amelia HrubyAnd I think that is certainly what is happening in The US and North America and even globally in 2025 when I'm recording this. Right? So through The US president's, I don't know what to call it, mayhem, chaos, tariff threats, that's created this broad lack of trust in the economy. And so I think that that is also a way that we can define a recession. And that takes me into, are we in a recession?

Amelia HrubySo it is too soon to quote unquote officially say. There was negative GDP growth in The US in q one. We will see about q two. It's not over yet. But I would say based on vibes, we are probably in a recession.

Amelia HrubyIf you're coming to this class, you probably don't, like, disagree with the general sense that we might be experiencing a recession. Now, of course, when I say we there, I am based in The United States. I work with people most often in North America and in Europe as well. So that's kind of my context. You may be having a different experience depending on where you live, work, are with people, experience the economy.

Amelia HrubyBut I'd say here, a lot of us are feeling that recession vibe. So whether or not we're in a recession, I think that it's important to talk about slow times. So what is a slow time? I'm defining this super broadly. A slow time is any period in your business where you are attracting fewer customers, booking fewer clients, or just making less money than you plan, hope, or expect.

Amelia HrubySo this could align with economic trends or not. It could be that your business is going through a slow time when everybody else, you know, is making a ton of money and getting more clients than ever and having a huge growth period. But you might be in a slow time. It may be that you and all of your friends are having a slow time at the same time. It is going to look different for each of us.

Amelia HrubyAlso, you'll notice that there is no, like, number here that I'm offering you. You could theoretically perhaps have like your best launch ever, and it still be a slow time in relationship to what you hoped or expected would happen. So there's so many layers of a slow time. Some of this may be about mindset. Some of it may be about planning.

Amelia HrubySome of it may be about looking to the past and seeing what's happening now. There are so many ways that we could think through that, and I'm not here to tell you whether or not you are in a slow time or not. But in fact, that'll be our one of our first reflection questions. So I would love to give us a moment to make a note for yourself, check-in with yourself, or put in the chat to share with our group here. Is your business in a slow time right now?