If you’re staring at your calendar and it’s June and you’re already thinking, “Oh my gosh, what am I about to do with the kids home all stinking summer?”, this one’s for you.
Because here’s the deal. You do not have to white-knuckle your way through the next eight weeks. You don’t have to ghost your clients. You don’t have to skip the beach. You don’t have to skip the pool. And you definitely don’t have to work from a hotel bathroom at 11pm while your kids are asleep.
There is a way to actually do this well. I’ve coached hundreds of women through it, and I pretty much live on a summer schedule 365 days out of the year. So I got you, friend. Let’s get into how to work from home with kids home all summer without dropping the ball on your clients or your sanity.
The Mindset Shift You Have to Make About Summer
Before we get into the tactical stuff, we have to start here. Because if you skip this, none of the strategies are going to work.
Most service providers approach summer like it’s an interruption. I hear it every single June. “Ugh, summer’s here. This means I have to figure out how to keep working around the kids. I don’t know if I can do this. What about vacations? I should just stop marketing my services. I’m not going to be able to take on any new clients. I just want to be super present with my kids, and I can’t do that AND have a business.”
That framing right there is the problem.
Summer is not an interruption to your business. Summer is part of your year. It is 25% of your calendar, y’all. Three full months. And you’ve known about it since the day you sent little Jimmy off to kindergarten or the day you started your business. Whichever came first, you knew summer was coming.
So we’re going to stop pretending it’s a surprise. We’re going to stop pretending you can run your business in summer the exact same way you run it in February, when the kids are in school for eight hours a day, and you have wide-open afternoons.
That’s not real. That’s a fantasy. And running your business on a fantasy is exactly why you’re so stinking stressed.
The Shift That Changes Everything
Say this with me. Summer is a different season of my business, and it gets a different plan.
That’s it. That’s the whole thing. Different hours. Different deliverables. Different boundaries. Different rhythm. And the kicker, your income does not have to drop because of it.
After running a business with kids for eight years and coaching hundreds of women through this, here’s what I know. The women who scale through summer are not the women who work the hardest. They’re the women who plan the smartest.
I’m not telling you this will be easy. I’m telling you it’s real. I have two kids. We homeschool. We travel. We do Disney. The house is loud, the schedule is full, and I still run a multi-seven-figure business in under 25 hours a week. My house is literally summer 365 days a year. So I’m not coming at this from theory.
The 4 Client Conversations You Need to Have This Week
Here’s the part nobody wants to do but everybody needs to do. The client conversation.
If you haven’t already had this conversation, we are not waiting another week. We’re doing it today. Right now, if possible. Because if you wait until three days out from your vacation to tell your clients you’ll be out of the office, you’ve already lost. You’ve put them in a reactive spot. You look unprofessional. And you’re going to spend the whole vacation refreshing your email instead of being present with your family.
Four things, with every single retainer client.
1. Send the Summer Schedule Email
Map it out week by week, June through August. When you’re at full capacity. When you’re on vacation. When you’re working modified hours. All of it. In writing.
Now, here’s the deal. You don’t need to send all of it. But you need to write it out so you can pull the highlights for your client. This is not asking permission. This is informing them with confidence.
You are a growth partner, not an order-taker. You are not a VA. You are not begging for time off. You are not an employee. The energy is, “Here’s my summer schedule. Here’s how we’re going to keep things moving for your business. Let me know if you have any questions.” Period.
2. Identify What Has to Get Done (and What Can Wait)
Most of your client work, y’all, can wait a few days. It really can. We’re not doing brain surgery. The world is not going to end if you don’t respond to a Slack message in four hours.
But there are some things that genuinely have to keep moving. An active ad campaign. A launch. A client paying you specifically for response time. Look at your client roster, look at the deliverables, and identify those. Put a plan around them.
3. Pre-Batch Everything You Can
This is the big one. And I need you to pause here, because this is where most service providers go off the rails.
The first instinct when you have a vacation coming up is, “I need to hire someone to cover for me.” Friends, no. That is not the model I teach. We are not building agencies. We are not hiring contractors every time we want a week off. That is a hamster wheel disguised as a solution.
What we’re doing instead is building a business that runs on systems, pre-batched work, and clear client expectations. For the work that can’t pause, you batch ahead. You record Looms. You schedule the content. You set up the ads two weeks before you leave. You write the emails in advance.
And here’s the rule. We are not doing launches while we’re on vacation. If a client decides, “Oh, we’re going to launch this week,” your answer is, “I’m sorry, I won’t be able to be there for that because I’ve already sent you my summer schedule.” You communicate the day that works for your business and your family, and you hold that boundary.
Champagne clients respect that. Bargain bin clients do not. And that’s a whole different conversation about who you should be working with in the first place.
4. Communicate Once, Clearly, and Trust That You Handled It
Stop sending six apologetic follow-up emails. Stop saying, “I’m SO sorry I’ll be away for one week.” You are not sorry. You are a business owner taking a vacation that you earned. Period.
A Real Strategist Society Example
Here’s how this looked for one of my Strategist Society members last summer. She had four retainer clients and a Disney cruise planned (she’s actually the one who gave me the idea to go on a cruise in the first place).
She was stressed because she had clients with ads running. And when you’re on a Disney cruise, unless you buy the WiFi package, you are out of communication.
So in May, we sent her summer schedule email. We mapped out her exact days away. The ads were running, they were proven campaigns, so she didn’t need to babysit them. Five days, it was going to be okay.
Then mid-month, one client asked, “Hey, I want to get these new campaigns going for the week I’m gone.” Here’s what she said. “Hey, I sent the summer schedule, so I do have my vacation coming up this week. I can go in and set up the campaign for you, but I won’t be able to monitor it while I’m gone. So we have two options. Option one, I’ll go in, schedule everything, and you can check in. Here are the numbers to watch. When I get back, I’ll review and make any edits. Option two, we wait until I get back and I have it scheduled for the following week, so I can review.”
The client decided to wait. That’s setting boundaries.
She didn’t know exactly what to say at first, so she Voxed me. That’s one of the perks of being in Strategist Society, real-time coaching when stuff comes up. We walked through the conversation together. No fires. No drama. No bad blood. Both clients happy. She went on her Disney cruise present with her family.
That’s what a peaceful, profitable summer looks like. You are so in your head about what your clients are going to think if you leave the office for a week. It is going to be okay.
The Summer Work Bucket List (My 3-Bucket Framework)
Okay, so now that we know how to handle clients, let’s actually map out the summer. Because I think sometimes when coaches talk about this stuff, it sounds great in theory, and then you’re like, “Okay, but what does Tuesday at 10am actually look like?”
The Strategist Society members who have great summers work in what I call power days. Two or three concentrated focus days per week. Real brain power work. Calls, content strategy, setting up campaigns. The other days are light. Inbox. Reports. Quick check-ins.
When they travel, they work in pockets. Not eight-hour days on vacation. That’s insane. Maybe 30 minutes in the morning before everyone else is awake, with a cup of coffee on the hotel balcony. And then they’re done. Phone away. Present.
That’s the same rhythm I use during heavy travel weeks too. Power days when I’m home. Tiny pockets when I’m not. Family time is protected on the calendar.
Now here’s the framework I want you to use to map your summer. I call it the Summer Work Bucket List, because there are three buckets every week of your summer falls into.
Bucket 1: Full Work Weeks
These are weeks where the kids have camp, your partner is taking point, or you’ve got a stretch of normal-ish childcare. You can work close to your normal hours. You knock out the heavier projects in these weeks.
Mark these on your calendar in one color.
Bucket 2: Modified Work Weeks
The kids are home, but you’re not traveling. You’re working power days. Two to three concentrated work days per week. Maybe 15 to 20 hours total. You’re doing the essentials and not much else. You set this expectation with clients in advance.
Mark these in a second color.
Bucket 3: Vacation Weeks
Fully off, or close to it. Working in 30-minute pockets only. Just check-ins to make sure nothing’s on fire. No client communication during these weeks. I need you to be super clear about this. Because as soon as you communicate with a client during vacation, they think you’re no longer on vacation. Just check in to make sure everything’s running. That’s it.
Mark these in a third color.
Most of my students who run this well end up with about 4 to 5 full work weeks, 5 to 6 modified work weeks, and 2 to 3 vacation weeks across the summer. That math averages to around 20 hours a week, and their income does not drop, because the work they’re doing is high-value strategic work, not order-taking, busy work.
Why This Works (And Why It Breaks If You’re Hourly)
This rhythm works because of the kind of business you build. A $50-an-hour ads manager cannot take a real vacation. Every hour she doesn’t work is an hour she doesn’t get paid. That is the hamster wheel.
A strategist with retainer clients who pay her a premium for outcomes can absolutely take real vacations. Her clients aren’t paying her for hours. They’re paying her for results. And champagne clients are happy to work around a modified summer schedule because they trust the strategy underneath it.
If you are currently in the hours-for-dollars model, summer is going to be stressful every single year. You’re not going to be able to take vacations because you don’t get paid. It’s that simple.
The fix is not “work harder in summer.” The fix is to repackage your offer so you’re not trading hours for dollars in the first place. That’s exactly what we teach inside Strategist Society.
Quick Wins You Can Implement Right Now
Even if you haven’t done the bigger repositioning yet, here’s what you can do this summer.
- Pre-batch your client work two weeks ahead of every vacation week. Not the night before. Two weeks ahead.
- Move your sales calls into your full work weeks. Don’t take new client calls during modified weeks if you can help it.
- Block your calendar. Like, actually block it. Put pool time on the calendar. Put the library trip on the calendar. Treat your family time like a paying client.
- Lower your content output. Repurpose what already works. This is not the season to launch a brand-new content pillar.
- Have summer office hours. Maybe you respond between 9 and 1. That’s it. That’s your window. Tell your clients. They will adjust. They are adults.
When Your Summer Is Already on Fire
Listen, if you’re reading this and it’s already mid-summer, and you didn’t pre-plan, and your kids are climbing the walls and your client just asked for something by Friday, and you’re supposed to leave for the beach on Saturday, I see you, my friend. I have been there. We have all been there.
Here’s what you do. Today. Not next week.
Triage. Open your laptop and write down every single thing that has to get done in the next two weeks. Then circle the ones that actually have a hard deadline, and cross out the ones that don’t. I promise you, half of what you think is urgent is not actually urgent. (I just helped one of our Strategist Society members work through this. She was juggling 10 projects at once and exhausted. We narrowed her focus to one thing at a time, and she’s already knocked out half her list.)
Communicate. Send a short, professional, non-apologetic email to your clients. “Hey, just a heads up, I’ll be out of the office from Saturday through the following Sunday. Here’s what I’ve already taken care of. I’ll be back in the inbox Monday morning.” That’s it.
Batch what you can right now. You probably have more runway than you think. Sit down for one focused power day this week and pre-build what needs to go out while you’re gone. Schedule it. Loom it. Get it off your plate.
Map the rest of your summer into the three buckets. It is not too late. Today is a great day to do it. Tomorrow is a great day to do it. Don’t let “I should have done this in April” stop you from doing it in June or July.
And listen, you are not failing. You are learning. Next year you’ll do it earlier. The year after that, even earlier. This stuff compounds. The women who run sustainable businesses are not the ones who got it right the first summer. They’re the ones who learned and adjusted every year.
So give yourself some grace, do the dang thing today, and let’s get the rest of your summer back on track.
Ready to Get Off the Hours-for-Dollars Hamster Wheel?
If you’re sitting here thinking, “Brandi, this all sounds great, but I am STILL in the hours-for-dollars model, and I’m exhausted, and my clients are a nightmare, and I need to get out of this before next summer destroys me again,” that is exactly what Strategist Society is for.
Strategist Society is my coaching program and mentorship for women service providers doing $3K to $10K months who are ready to break through to $10K, $15K, $20K months as a strategist. We help you repackage your offers, get in front of champagne clients, get off hourly charging, raise your prices without losing clients, and build the kind of business where you can take a 10-day vacation and your income does not drop. No agency required.
The reason I built this program is because I lived the hamster wheel, and I know how to get women off of it.
If you’re earlier in the journey and you’re just getting your freelance business started (or trying to grow it past your first few thousand a month), head to conversionsforclients.com instead. That’s the right starting place for you.
And if you just want to tell me what your summer looks like and where you’re stuck, slide into my DMs on Instagram at @brandimowles. Send me the word SUMMER and let’s chat. I read every single message.
Summer does not have to break your business. It can actually be one of the best seasons of your year, with the right plan and the right offer structure underneath it. So go map out your summer this week. Have those client conversations. Build your buckets. Trust the plan.
You’ve got this, my friend. Go do the dang thing.
Loved this post? It’s based on this week’s episode of the Serve Scale Soar podcast. Hit play, share it with the friend who’s already drowning in summer chaos, and let’s go out, serve our clients, scale our businesses, and soar.
** This post may contain affiliate links, which means I may receive a small commission at no additional cost to you if you use one of the links to purchase. This helps keep the podcast going and I only share products I have used, tested, and love.”
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Meet Brandi
Brandi Mowles is the host of the Serve Scale Soar® podcast which is a podcast dedicated to helping service-based entrepreneurs scale their online business to five-figure months so they can soar into six-figure years. Brandi is a wife, mom and in less than one year, created a six-figure business. Now she is spilling all her secrets so you can too.
