Don’t Let Summer Steal Your Momentum
By Scott Malcolm
Summer has a way of making everything feel optional. The days stretch longer, the calendar clears out, and a quiet voice whispers that it’s okay to coast for a while. And it is okay to a point. Rest is real, recovery matters, and no one builds a lasting business by running on empty.
But here’s what the data keeps telling us: roughly 70% of your business success comes through referrals. And referrals don’t take a summer break. They come from the relationships you’ve tended, the calls you made, and the touchpoints you kept showing up for, even when the pool was calling.
Staying Connected (Without Burning Out)
The goal isn’t to ignore summer, but rather to stay intentionally light and consistently present. Think of it as maintenance mode, not growth mode. That might mean a few touchpoints a week, some genuine conversation, a handwritten note, or a quick voice message to a top-tier contact. These small acts compound over the summer months and keep you top of mind when September arrives, and decisions start getting made again.
Consider batching your SOI outreach into two or three focused sessions a week rather than letting it loom over every day. This gives you real time off while protecting the relationship pipeline you’ve spent the year building. That allows you to still enjoy the season while preserving your momentum.
A Tale of Two Summers
Meet Austin. He’s the kind of person who checks the tide charts before he checks his email, and given the choice between a showing and a sunrise fishing trip, he’ll need a moment to think about it. He runs his own real estate brokerage and built his business almost entirely on relationships. Every summer he used to go completely dark. No outreach, no check-ins, no touchpoints.
“I told myself I deserved it,” he laughs now. “And I did. I just didn’t realize what it was costing me.”
A couple years ago, Austin came back from a three-week fishing trip to find that two of his warmest referral sources had each sent a friend to a different broker. It wasn’t because they were unhappy with him, but because he simply hadn’t been in the conversation.
“Out of sight, out of mind is real,” he says. “I didn’t lose those relationships. I just… missed the moment.”
Last summer, Austin tried something different. He called it his “stack” strategy: instead of treating work and summer as opposites, he wove small connection moments into activities he was already doing. He’d snap a photo of a nice catch out on the water and text it to a client with a note: “This made me think of you, hope your summer is going well.”
He’d batch his SOI calls into “Focused Monday Mornings,” so the rest of his time was fully free. He sent three handwritten notes from the lake house: one to a top-tier client, one to a past referral source, and one to a prospect he’d been meaning to reconnect with.
The result? His best September on record. Five referrals came in within the first two weeks of fall, including one from the prospect who’d received a note.
“He told me he’d been thinking about calling me all summer,” Austin says. “That handwritten note was just the nudge he needed. Thirty seconds of effort, written at the dock. That’s it.”
Austin didn’t work more last summer. He worked smarter, in smaller doses, stacked on top of the life he was already living. The boat and the water were still there. So was the momentum.
You Are the Engine
Summer is a gift. Use it to recharge, to be present with the people you love, and to pursue the life that makes your work meaningful. But don’t hand over the wheel. You’ve worked too hard to let a season of sunshine undo the foundation you’ve built. Stay connected. Stay visible. Let your sphere know you’re still here because the entrepreneurs who thrive in the fall are the ones who never really stopped showing up in the summer.
Ready to build your own summer stack? Contact us for a free Business Consultation. In this 30-minute call, we’ll help you get clear on your vision, identify what’s holding you back, see what’s working for others just like you and discover your next step.
