One of my Inner Circle clients sat across from me recently, genuinely frustrated, and said she couldn’t work it out.
Her work is excellent. Her clients rave about her. Her engagements tend to run for two years, sometimes longer – which on paper is the dream. Deep work, steady revenue, no constant hunting.
And yet her pipeline was empty.
When we pulled it apart, the answer was sitting right there. For two years she’d been head down, delivering, brilliantly. And because the work was full, nothing else was happening. No conversations with past clients. No referral asks. Nothing going out to people who didn’t know her yet.
So the problem she was feeling wasn’t a right-now problem at all. It started two years ago. It just took this long to show up.
I’ve thought about that conversation a lot this week, because we’re about to walk into the most deceptive stretch of the business year.
There are just over eleven weeks until Christmas, and realistically about ten working weeks before most of us down tools. Most of the women I speak to treat them as the run home. Finish the client work, get through the end-of-year functions, survive December, start fresh in January.
I get it. I’ve done it more than once.
But January doesn’t start in January. The clients you sign in February are the conversations you start in October and November. The proposals that land in the first quarter are being thought about right now, by people quietly deciding who they trust with next year’s budget. If you’re not in those conversations now, you won’t be in them in February either. You’ll just find out later, the way my client did.
So these weeks are doing two jobs.
The first is locking in revenue before the year closes. The proposal that’s been sitting with someone since August. The past client you keep meaning to call. The renewal nobody has raised yet.
The second is seeding next year. The conversations, introductions and visibility that won’t pay you this quarter but will decide what the start of 2027 looks like.
Most people only do the first one, because it’s urgent. Some don’t do either, because they’re exhausted. And honestly, exhausted is fair – it’s been a big year. But exhausted isn’t a plan, and neither is hoping January will be different.
For my client, that conversation was the breakthrough. She’s now building pipeline alongside the delivery instead of after it, so she never has to have that conversation with herself again.
So let me ask you.
If I looked at your diary between now and Christmas, how much of it is building February?
Janine x