#43 Maycember Reminds Us That Our Best Marketing Strategy Might Be Seasonal

Show Notes

In this episode of Rooted & Relentless, Steph Rubio unpacks the very real phenomenon of “Maycember” and why it matters to more than just mompreneuers and parents alone.

This isn’t just a conversation about parenting busy seasons. It’s about understanding the rhythms of your audience, planning your business around real human capacity, and creating strategy that actually meets people where they are instead of pretending everyone has unlimited time, energy, and brain space year-round.

Steph breaks down:

1. Why buyer behavior changes seasonally
2. How to anticipate summer slowdowns strategically
3. What service providers should actually focus on during slower seasons
4. Why backend operations matter more than flashy marketing during certain quarters
5. How calm leadership creates sustainable growth
6. The strategic planning framework most small business owners skip entirely

This episode is part business strategy, part reality check, and part permission slip to stop marketing like every month functions the same.

Memorable Moments + Soundbites

“You have to know the business rhythms of your ideal client just like you need to know yours.”

“Your audience isn’t ignoring you. They may just not have the brain space right now.”

“Stop selling like it’s March.”

“Summer isn’t the time to disappear. It’s the time to shore up your backend.”

“Stable calm leadership means knowing your people, knowing their rhythms, and planning accordingly.”

“Business has seasons. So do buyers.”

Key Takeaways

1. Seasonal buyer behavior affects engagement, sales, and decision-making
2. Parents of school-aged kids often experience “May-cember” and summer capacity shifts
3. Strategic planning should account for audience energy, not just business goals
4. Summer can be the perfect operational cleanup and preparation season
5. Q3 and Q4 momentum depends heavily on what gets prepared beforehand
6. Strategy is about timing, context, and market awareness — not just tactics

Mentioned in This Episode

Explore The Rooted Reset retreat

https://www.stephrubio.com/reverse-engineering-vip-day?utm_source=chatgpt.com

Connect on Instagram - Steph is a voice note Kween

https://www.instagram.com/virtually_stephrubio?utm_source=chatgpt.com

What is Rooted & Relentless?

Rooted & Relentless is the business strategy podcast for entrepreneurs building service-based businesses designed to grow, adapt, and last. Business strategist Steph Rubio shares practical guidance on a range of topics meant to help you sell, scale, and stabilize.
Think sustainable business growth, revenue strategy, systems, capacity, client experience, and the founder leadership required to turn your skills into a successful, sustainable company.

Steph Rubio: ⁓ my gosh, I'm so pumped to be recording this episode. And it's not even because of the topic. It's just because it's been a while. I feel like since I've sat here and recorded like a fresh episode straight out of my head alone, I've had a couple of guests and I've some pieces from older episodes and ⁓ new spots of them. But like ⁓ sitting here chatting and shooting the shit with you. I also sit in front of my window for the best light when I do this. And I realize, especially when it's overcast, it makes me look rather pale. So. Well, that's a wrap on this episode of Rooted and Relentless. If it made you laugh, nod alone, or grab that cute little notebook of yours and scribble something down, hit me with the SSR, subscribe, share, and review. As in, leave a review. Thanks for hanging. Bye. Hey, I'm Steph Rubio, your go-to for no-nonsense chit chat on growing a business and life that you actually love. Around here, we're rooted in who we are, even if we're still learning to love her, getting clear on where we want to go, and we're relentless in our pursuit to get there. Hello from your favorite vampire, Steph Rubio leading this Rooted and Relentless podcast, which is lots of shenanigans and snickers and laughs and my little side humor. I don't know what to call it. ⁓ So you have an idea, just tell me. I've heard a lot lately. ⁓ I this grounded energy that helps people feel grounded and calm. And on the complete flip side of that, like I'm so silly and I make people laugh. And so it's like, just what do you call that? Tell me and I'll tell people. We get into the nitty gritty of growth in life and in business, money, identity, boundaries, healing, leadership, parenting, partners, and all the messy bits in between. If you're ready to grow on your own terms, laugh a lot, possibly cry a little, maybe laugh until we cry if we're lucky, then hit subscribe and let's get into it. This is Rooted and Relentless, I want to talk about May-Sember today, but not just May-Sember I want to talk about, okay? I want draw why that even matters to you because I'm a lessons girl. I'm a business girl. I'm a this is bigger than us girl. So let's talk about it. Grab your notepad and hold on to your tits. This one's for you. ⁓ If you don't know what May-Sember is, basically saying that May is like December. there's holidays. You're closing the year in your business. You're wrapping up some sales, you're doing some final deliveries, preparing for like time off for the holidays, right? Well, add having kids that are school aged on top of that, and they have a lot of end of the semester, end of the year stuff at school. They have band recitals, they are closing out sports, they have dance recitals, they have concerts, they have a lot. So in addition to like, who's buying the turkey? Who's making the cranberry jam? ⁓ no, we don't want the cranberry jam, we want it out of the can. Whose house are we doing Christmas at? ⁓ my God. I have to be with my family all of that parents of school age kids then have more on top of that because they got to get the shoes and the shirt and make sure it still fits and that this is on the calendar. Okay. So we get to Maycember which is what's happening now. And it's pretty much the same thing because the school is ending and there's graduations and there's into school activities. I have a kindergartner and I have a seventh grader big spread there. I know I a while to make sure we wanted to do this again. You know what I mean? So amongst them, they have end of school year testing. There's a dance recital. There's a band concert. There is a try out new band instruments for the next year after school ⁓ There is like the day that I'm recording this literally in 20 minutes. I got a jet out of here for a ⁓ 10 a.m. Day tea at my kindergartner's classroom. ⁓ There was a splash There is a ton. And that's all in one month. And then the summer slowdown happens. Then a lot of the parents keep the kids home, right? And this will be a first for me. I'm terrified. though I'm a mom, right? This is why like, Maycember is even new to me. Even though I've been a mom since, you know, 13 years. I'm about to have a 13 year old I mentioned in seventh grade. Having one is different than having two. And there hasn't always felt like this big on-ramp. ⁓ I haven't always kept my kids home during the summer. Like Cooper, goes to his dad sometimes during the summer, like for a month. Anyways, that's neither here nor there, but this will be the first time that I do work in a more limited capacity and keep them home a lot more. And it's bit terrifying, this is the reason why I tell you this is because if I'm your ideal client, ⁓ someone you're trying to sell to this matters to you the same way. If that's not your ideal client, if they're not like parents, you know, if that's not the case, then it doesn't apply to you. ⁓ have to know the business rhythms of your ideal client. of your target audience because yours need to be planned a bit around theirs. So if they're having a crazy busy freaking May and then they're walking into a summer slowdown, which isn't going to feel slow to them they might be working two to three hours a day and then having activities with the kids and running them and traveling and doing summer vacations because by the way, parents of school aged kids ⁓ summer vacation more, they vacation in the summer than any other time because the kids are in school. And so they're not going to have a lot of time or brain space to care what you're selling. Doesn't mean they won't be buying, but these are all things you need to consider when you plan the year ahead for yourself and when you're going to market and sell certain things, are they actually going to have the mental brain space to even care and buy what you're selling? Also, take being a parent out of this. I just wanted to use Maycember as an example because I was on a community call recently, not community, but one that I'm a part of, ⁓ and mentioned, like, I think that people are just ⁓ slammed now. And I was like, they totally are. And I mentioned and they had no idea. To plan and be prepared. And if you lead a community, are you going to have less community engagement because people are slammed, right? ⁓ But you take being a parent out of it. And January starts, think about it, right? January started, some people hit the ground running. Some people were like, it's mid January and we're getting into the swing of things. We enjoyed our holidays and now we're ramped back up and it's cold and rainy and we're like, man, we don't want to be here. Either way. Then we get into February and March and April and momentum is rocking. We're marketing the things, we're selling the things, the new ideas are happening, that new energy hits. I talked about this earlier this year. Okay. So business rhythms is something I do. It's part of your strategy. You have to think about. what your competitors are doing, what your ideal people are doing, and how you meet that moment, how you meet the market, you know? So, then we're like, February, March, April is banging. April is a big events month. I just came back from Power Table Live. Some people have gone to two or three events. I know some people ⁓ hosted their own event and then went to another event. And now we're rolling into May. And whether you have Maycember or not, you are two to three months into just steamrolling through momentum. and that is going to start trickling down for the summer slowdown. Now, what I tell my people is still think about what you're doing, right? I have a lot of operations people, a lot of creative people. And while their ideal folks might be limited during the summer because they're on limited capacity and taking care of their kids, I think summer is one of the best freaking times to shore up your backend and operations because guess what happens in the fall? The same cycle. August, September, October, even into November a bit, go back to school, people wrapping up vacations, they're getting back into that frame of mind around August. So September, October, November, momentum is insane again. People are moving, they're creating they're filling gaps, they're hiring, they're spending money. That all happens again. So what do you think they need walking into August, September, October? They need to have their back-end operation shored up If you're creative, they need all of these parts ready, planned, prepared, strategy backed so that they can meet the moment when the momentum happens. Your job is to convince them that summer's not the time for them to slow down on their support and doing these things. It's the time to get it all ready. So you can look at your full year. Think through your ideal people and when they're doing what. What are the most moments to capitalize? What may be happening? And it doesn't mean, like I just said, you can't sell in the summer. It just means the way you do and how you talk about it and the levers that you pull and the sensations that you get them to feel and remind them of are a little bit different than they are in March. That's a part of strategy, knowing your people. And I am unashamed to admit that I have now designed a space where we can get together once a year and plan ahead. And this is only one piece of it. Like if you have scratched a little bit of this green nail polish off my fingernail. That's a small piece of sand in the entire thing that is your strategic plan, but it's certainly an important part of it. Thinking about when you do what in the year ahead, it's really just looking at the bones and outlining what you're doing in January. What are you launching in March? What's happening around August and these different things? What months you're developing, what months you're selling, and then you can get down to the detail of the tactics that you're going to do in the actions. So that is like, we determine that you are gonna be more visible and you wanna guest on podcasts a bit to get more opportunity. When are we targeting those months? When do you need that kind of stuff to come out to benefit you? This is what strategy looks like. So I built a room where we design your strategic plan for the year ahead and we have those targets and bones of what you're doing. And then for the first part of the year, the first three to six months, we'll get down to that granular level. and you'll stop again mid-year next year and look at that second half of what you said. Make sure it all still makes sense. Take your learnings from Q1 and Q2 and see if there's any adjustments you make. See if what you said you would do at the end of the year still makes sense. And then it'll just be as easy as yes, no, keep this, don't do that. Define your actions and keep going. The room is the rooted reset. And October 7th through the 10th, we are going to get together, mountainside, lakeside retreat. And we're going to do exactly this. We're going to design your strategic plan, what you need to be doing and when in the year ahead mapping your actions to do that for the first part of the year. And then the second day is more wellness, community activity, retreat style. So we plan and we reset the business and then we also reset you. If that's something you're interested in, I'll drop the wait list ⁓ the show notes here. I know that every business owner, everyone who leads a business needs this. done it with corporations in the past, but not to this degree. We would spend months gathering data, months talking, months talking in circles. We would get together two days at some city and we would finalize the strategic plan or try to. Typically it wouldn't be finalized. It would be more months of talking and you'd finally get it into January and February. Now you're already missing a couple of months, right? ⁓ removed all of that, developed this in a way that we can do it in one day. The second day we can reset and then you feel confident and at ease walking into the new year instead of feeling like my god, I'm behind again. Stable calm leadership. Know your people, know their rhythms, plan your rhythms around them. Find all the joy you can in the world.