Ah, spring! A time when working moms shake out the rugs, scrub patio furniture, and hang sheets outside to capture that elusive “fresh air” scent. Never mind that our ghostly white Midwestern bodies hadn’t seen the sun in months, and it was still pretty bracingly cold out there.
But, entrepreneurial working moms? We have a very different version of spring cleaning—one that involves less scrubbing and more strategy.
1. Take a Fresh Look at the Industry (a.k.a. Do a Deep Dive on Your Competitors)
Spring is a great time to zoom out and gut check that your business is still on track for world domination.
- What’s trending? Are your competitors rolling out new strategies, products, or pricing models that you should consider (or… do some of their best ideas look suspiciously like something you introduced last quarter?) Either way, make sure you re-assess pricing, distribution, and sales strategy to either defend against – or capitalize on, a competitor’s marketplace moves. We usually spent the most on innovation and sales in the second quarter, while our competitors were slowing down after a first quarter spending bonanza.
- Who’s new in town? A new competitor could shift how you market, where you show up, or even how you price your offerings. We used to update our competitive matrix every quarter—tracking their products, social media moves, marketing placements, and even the conferences they were hitting. Then we would dwell, obsess, eat too many office snacks, and text each other well into the night, deciding what, if anything, we should tweak to outdistance an upstart early.
2. Shake Out Your Goals (and Maybe Do a Victory Dance)
It’s the end of Q1, time to check in on those big, ambitious goals.
- Are you crushing it or crashing? Do a quick audit. If you’re ahead, celebrate! It’s time to tweak, adjust, or overhaul if you’re behind. We often escaped our usual haunts (office or home) to take an unfiltered look at our goals without interruptions.
- Use Mel Robbin’s traffic light method to review each goal:
- Green = You’re on track, keep going.
- Red = You’re way off. Time for a full reset—either the goal itself or a more disruptive way to achieve that goal.
- Yellow = You’re kind of there but need a push—what’s the boldest thing you could do to get back on track?
- Loop back to #1: Do any goals need to be added or amended based on your gathered competitive intel? Sometimes, we change our goals quarterly, particularly if we saw a hole in the market we could exploit quickly.
3. Dust Off Your Financials (Because Numbers Don’t Lie)
- Revenue check: Are sales where they should be, or do you need to be a lot more aggressive with sales and marketing? We always re-did the financials if we missed the first quarter budget to remind us of how much more we had to add each and every quarter to meet our goals. This usually made us a lot more aggressive with pricing or chasing opportunities that came our way, no matter how busy we were.
- Cost-cutting time: Are your product costs still reasonable? Can you negotiate better rates or trim unnecessary expenses? Is every employee hitting their stride – or can you work with them closer to have them contribute more to revenue or operations? We often asked team members at this time of year what they thought we could do to boost efficiency; sometimes we’d get golden ideas!
- Consultant check-in: Are your freelancers, agencies, or advisors delivering? Are they moving fast enough—or too fast? Time for a reset conversation? Or a change?
4. Refresh Your “Kitchen Cabinet” (a.k.a. Your Inner Circle)
- Do you have the right people lined up for what’s ahead? You just re-did or tweaked your goals for the year. Now, make sure you have the right advisors to tap into to support them.
- Who are you chasing? Is there a mentor, advisor, or partner you need to follow up with? This is the time of year when we rekindle people who gave us a “sure, but not now” and do a temperature check to see if it was the right time.
- Who’s gone MIA? If someone in your circle has gone quiet, give them grace—life happens. But also, don’t hesitate to find someone else to fill the gap. We found that our LinkedIn contacts that were one or two degrees out changed a lot as we added more people into the network. So, we usually set aside a few (sleepless) nights trying to find new possible adds to our network.
And Now, The Most Important Mompreneur Task of the Spring…
All seasoned working moms know what’s coming next: Summer camp enrollment. Yep, it’s already that time.
- Put those registration dates on your calendar NOW. (Victoria’s calendar has 10 colors and makes most people break into hives—do what works for you.)
- Coordinate camp cabin groups so your kid isn’t the only one stuck with strangers. (Beth may or may not still be recovering from the year she forgot to do this—her kids rode the waitlist all summer. Her kids still remember being banished to a cabin with only kids from their rival school.)
If you only have time for one spring cleaning task, make it the camp sign-ups. Trust us—do the camps. The dust bunnies can wait… a few days, or let’s be honest, weeks. Meanwhile, the tiger stay-at-home working moms have been training for this moment—alarms set, cabins mentally mapped out, and fingers poised on the mouse like it’s the last pickleball court sign-up option. Prioritize accordingly.
