How to Do a Seasonal Review for Your Small Business (and Why It Matters)
If you’re a small business owner, your life and your work are deeply intertwined. Here’s a process we use ourselves, and recommend to help you thrive both personally and professionally!
Why a Seasonal Review Helps Small Business Owners
An end-of-summer review can make your next summer run more smoothly. Taking the time to reflect is an opportunity to evaluate and learn from a season that usually looks different from the rest of the year, whether you have kids at home or not. Perhaps your business has a seasonal flow, you have children or a partner who runs on the school schedule, or you travel more in the summer. Juggling all this can make summers hectic, so doing a review at the end of the season can be a really helpful tool for planning the next year. When a season wraps up, it’s fresh in your mind right now—and easy to forget later.
A seasonal review helps you capture what worked, spot what didn’t, and set yourself up to thrive the next time around instead of starting from scratch.
Why Review Your Summer?
If your household’s routine shifts seasonally, it’s even more important to pause and reflect. Personally, I have a lot of flexibility around my work schedule, and I also have two school-aged kids who have summers off and a partner who works from home, so those factors influence my summer planning.
My goals for having a great summer involve setting realistic work hours, planning fun activities with my family, and figuring out what the kids will do while we work. I also prioritize enjoying my summer, which for me means balancing work and personal time and making the most of the beautiful but short PNW summer weather.
Your summer probably looks different—say, client deadlines change, networking events pick up, or you take time off to recharge— but you’ll benefit from reviewing how it all went. That way, your business plans and your personal life align more smoothly the next time the season comes around.
Two Frameworks for a Seasonal Review
Over the years, I’ve been inspired by two writers who take slightly different but complementary approaches to seasonal reviews: Kelly Nolan and Kendra Adachi.
Kelly Nolan – Summer Debrief
Kelly suggests asking simple, practical questions like:
What worked and what didn’t?
How did it feel for you?
Did the timing of things work out?
Did you like the frequency?
What would you change for next year?
She also recommends breaking your review into sections—travel, kid care, socializing, work, etc.—so you don’t miss anything. One idea from Kelly that’s been especially helpful for me is calendaring everything instead of just hoping you’ll remember. Our brains hold a lot– let your calendar handle some of that. Game-changer!
Kelly’s approach is very logistical and structured, which makes it perfect if you want to walk away with concrete notes you can act on.
Kendra Adachi – Plan a Season
In her book The Plan, Kendra guides readers through reflection as a way of planning the season ahead. She encourages you to:
Recall what stood out from the previous season.
Note any changes that occurred or priorities that shifted.
Reflect on what didn’t work—not to be negative, but to understand why.
Reflect on what did work—both logistically and in terms of what made you feel good.
Acknowledge the things you can’t eliminate, but can shrink or adjust to make more manageable.
Kendra’s framework uses reflections around feelings, energy, and enjoyment to form the basis for logistics and granular planning. This helps keep the details in alignment with your big-picture values. Being honest about what felt good and what didn’t brings a massive amount of clarity, whether you keep it surface-level or dig into deeper layers of things that were challenging (both are fine!). Some of the small things you identify may seem trivial, but really boost your satisfaction– for example, I realized last year that one of the things I love about summer is the fragrance of flowers. So this year I brought my laptop outside to work in my rose garden as much as possible. On the flip side, perhaps you realize that you need to have a tough conversation with someone on your team, or that your current direction is out of alignment. Reflecting on your energy can generate these insights and prompt the needed action steps.
Remember, YOU are the most important investment you’ll ever make in your business. Looking at your life and work in a holistic way, and making adjustments where needed, will make your business more sustainable in the long run.
My Two-Step Seasonal Review Process
I’ve found that combining both approaches works beautifully. Here’s how I do it:
Block time for a quick summer debrief (Kelly’s approach). I make notes on what worked, what didn’t, and how I felt about it, broken down by categories.
Use those notes as input for planning the next season (Kendra’s approach). I carry the lessons forward so my next summer—and business season—starts stronger.
This year, for example, I realized scheduling an hour of admin time on the weekends enabled me to stick to my work hours better on weekdays. We also took a wonderful family trip to Europe that gave me ideas for future travel. I journaled my reflections, and set a reminder to review them next May when I’m starting to think about summer again.
It’s such a simple rhythm, but it’s been game-changing for both my family and my business.
Try a Seasonal Review for Your Business
If you’re curious to try this, here are some quick steps:
Set aside 15 minutes.
Ask yourself Kelly’s practical questions.
Layer in Kendra’s reflection on how things felt and what mattered.
Capture your notes somewhere easy to find next year (calendar reminder, notes app, journal)
Whether you’re planning family time or managing client workloads, you’ll thank yourself later.
Resources
Learn more about Kelly Nolan’s approach.
Check out Kendra Adachi’s book The Plan. (Highly recommend!)
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