How to Escape the Feast-or-Famine Cycle in Your Business

At Carla’s small law firm, the first sign of trouble is always the sigh. It slips out the moment she realizes another big case is wrapping up. After weeks of legal deep-diving and late-night coffee runs, she finally comes up for air only to find the phone barely ringing. Which means it’s scramble time again: networking, emails to old contacts, maybe an impromptu “lunch and learn” for local business owners. The pattern never changes. Deliver the work, ignore marketing, finish the work, scramble for new clients. Rinse, lather, and repeat.

A few blocks away, Jon paces inside his boutique marketing agency (the place is too small to call it an “office,” he says it’s more of a creative fishbowl). He’s brilliant at brand strategy; if you put him in a client meeting, he can spin up tagline ideas and color palettes all day. But once he’s deep into client work, outreach falls off a cliff. His proposals to prospective clients wait in “draft” mode. A single scorching-hot project can keep him running around for weeks, until it ends, and he realizes, whoops, no new deals lined up.

Then there’s Terri, who owns a small accounting firm. In early March, she’s working 12-hour days on tax returns, client upon client upon client. She sighs (oddly similar to Carla, tethered through space and time by the same anxiety) because for a couple of months, the office is a bustling hive of data entry and deadlines. After tax season? Not so much. She tries going to local meetups or spamming LinkedIn with “Bookkeeping tips!” but it never feels consistent.

Same story, different flavors. And the reason you might recognize their pain is that this “owner-operated grind” sneaks up on anyone in a trust-based business. In slow times, you push your marketing pedal to the floor until your pipeline looks decent. Then once you’re busy delivering for those clients, marketing all but disappears, until the next moment you suddenly need more revenue. It’s hard to build real momentum that way. It’s also exhausting, and (spoiler alert) it can keep your business from ever becoming a valuable, self-sustaining asset that someone else might want to buy or take over.

Now, maybe you’re not looking to sell your business soon... or ever. That’s okay. The funny thing is, a “sellable” business really means a business that doesn’t hinge on whether you’re personally marketing today or buried in work. It’s about building enough consistency that, if you wanted to take a month off, or eventually pass the torch to a partner, things wouldn’t fall apart the second you stepped away. Even if your master plan is to stay in the driver’s seat forever, imagine how different day-to-day life could feel if your pipeline didn’t depend on your ability to hustle whenever you had a free second.

Carla’s law firm is starting to see what that might look like. She’s begun hosting a monthly Zoom “legal Q&A” for local entrepreneurs. It’s not fancy, she does a quick half-hour talk on the top five mistakes small businesses make with contracts, then answers questions. She records it (with minimal editing) and sends it to folks who sign up. Voila: new leads trickle in steadily, even if she’s mid-trial. One talk can generate calls for weeks.

Jon, at the marketing agency, realized he can’t just cross his fingers and hope for the next big client. So he chose a very specific niche, boutique hotels in his region, and built relationships with event planners and web designers who serve that same crowd. They quietly send him leads when they spot a hotel that needs fresh branding. Meanwhile, he can keep designing mood boards and crafting campaigns without worrying that the pipeline will run dry the moment he stops shaking hands at meetups.

Terri, the accountant, took a leap by offering an all-year “peace of mind” package: monthly check-ins and bookkeeping, unlimited quick-call support, plus priority scheduling in tax season. That’s now the core product she highlights on her site and in her free “Quarterly Finance Tips” emails. So far, a surprising number of clients have moved onto that subscription-like plan. Steady monthly cash flow, fewer last-minute emergencies... and she doesn’t have to scramble for new signups every time the office is quiet.

In each example, the key is that these owners built something bigger than one-off success. Carla’s monthly webinar can run even if she’s busy, because she’s got a simple process in place (her assistant sets it up, sends reminders, automates the recordings). Jon’s referral relationships mean prospective clients show up even if he’s knee-deep in a project. Terri’s “peace of mind” plan ensures stable income and positions her as a year-round advisor, not just a seasonal resource.

Nobody’s saying these changes are magical or happen overnight. But once you start putting even a rudimentary system in place, something that can operate on autopilot or with minimal oversight, marketing never truly stops. The old “feast or famine” roller coaster starts leveling out. And that sets the stage for everything else in your business to breathe, including you.

For just a moment, picture what it would be like if your own pipeline had that dependable heartbeat, gently sending you new prospects week by week, instead of slamming you with nothingness or burying you in urgent demands. You’d have more freedom to be creative, to refine your service, maybe even take a real vacation. Even if a sale isn’t on your mind, you’re building an asset that isn’t 100% tethered to your daily activities.

If you’re nodding, but aren’t sure where to begin, try this tiny step: carve out an hour this week to list every successful client acquisition effort you’ve done in the past year, big or small. Could you turn one of them into a monthly or quarterly habit? If yes, jot down the steps and see which parts you can automate or delegate. That might be enough to start your own shift from “help, I need clients right now” to “I’ve got a system that does the heavy lifting.”

Because, if Carla’s law firm can smooth out the wild spikes, if Jon can keep winning new business without turning into a 24/7 sales machine, and if Terri can reshape her entire accounting model for predictable monthly work... maybe you can, too.

Stay tuned for the next note, where we’ll dig into how these same three owners discovered which specific types of clients they should focus on most, and why that alone can reduce a ton of marketing stress. A lot of interesting surprises popped up for them when they uncovered who their real “dream clients” were. Until then, cheers to turning your business from reactive hustle into something that runs a bit more on autopilot, letting you breathe.

P.S. If you’re doing decent revenue but still feel like things should be easier, this checklist is for you.
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