Hey Reader,

Growing up with small business owner parents, you pick up a few things pretty quickly.

Like the return of summer hours.

By lunch time on Friday afternoons, my dad's office was empty. Everyone had wrapped up what needed wrapping up early so they could take their Friday afternoon to go out on the river, hit the beach, and enjoy the season.

Dad ran summer hours every year and he announced them the same way every time. No apology. No paragraph explaining himself. Just a plain notice that went up before Memorial Day.

WE ARE ON SUMMER HOURS

Most business owners I talk to want those shorter weeks too. What stops them is the fear that being less available will cost them clients.

It won't.

You don't have to be available to your clients 24/7... in fact, you don't even have to be available 9-5. Most small businesses do not need you to be on-call!

But it can feel impossible to set those boundaries when you feel like you should be available with a 5 minute response time. We've gotta set some real boundaries here so you can reclaim your life this summer!

​This week on Promote Yourself to CEO, I'm handing you the permission slip to set your summer hours, and walking through exactly how I announce mine so nobody panics and no one quietly disappears on me.

Here's what I'm sharing in this week's episode:

→ Why the "I respond within an hour" standard you set is the thing now running your summer, and how to walk it back without losing anyone

→ The exact way to announce your hours so it lands as leadership instead of you asking permission

→ The simple autoresponder move that answers half your inbox before you ever open it

→ How to take a whole day back for deep work this summer without a single client knowing that's what you did

→ The standing appointment I keep on my calendar in every season, busy or slow, and why it's the one that never moves

If you need a quick way to reset boundaries and expectations around your calendar and your availability - summer hours is the perfect way to prove to yourself that it can be done!

Racheal

PS - If you want the season to actually hold while you take real time off, the On-Demand CEO Retreat is where you build the capacity for it.

🖥️ The On-Demand CEO Retreat is bundled right now with the Client Growth Engine™, the first system we install in every business inside The CEO Collective®. You map your 90-day plan and the marketing engine that fills it in the same pass, at your pace, around your summer instead of on top of it.

The bundle price goes up once I'm back from Italy, so if it's been sitting on your list, this is the window.

PPS - Want to catch up on the Summer Success Series?

​1: The Mid-Year Review That Resets The Second Half of 2026​

​2: Notes to Future Me: A Simple Habit to Protect Your Capacity​

​3: Why Fall Chaos is a Summer Planning Problem​