Business Resilience: When You’re Snowed In, Do More With Less
December 4, 2025
When business slows down, your company’s growth doesn’t have to stop. Whether it's just taking a break to celebrate the holidays or if your production line has stalled, these periods of stillness give you a rare chance to bolster business resilience. Instead of chasing new tools, clients, or ideas, smart business owners look inward. They find opportunity and resources right in front of them.
No one proved that better than Charles Dickens.
A Winter of Pressure and Possibility
In late 1843, Charles Dickens found himself in a writing slump, with mounting debts, a large family to support, and a fifth child on the way. His last novel had tanked. His publishers threatened to cut his pay and warned him that there might not be another chance.
No comfort. No guarantees. A foreboding chill lingered in the air.
Rather than give up, Dickens leaned into the moment. He walked the London streets at night, letting the frost clear his mind. Out of that bleak midwinter, an idea evolved. A story about redemption, gratitude, and the power of a changed heart flickered through his mind. He wrote what he saw in the streets: a profound division between the rich and the poor, and the ways in which generosity could improve the situation. He tried a new method, opting for a short-form novella instead of longer, serialized content. Using his own disabled family members as inspiration, he wrote A Christmas Carol in six feverish weeks. “Some books need to build a following, but A Christmas Carol was an immediate success. The debut print run of 6,000 copies, which arrived on December 19, sold out in a week.”
It wasn’t a story built on abundance. It was born from scarcity, from being snowed in with nothing but imagination and a desperate hope.
Stillness Creates Strength
The pace of business never lets up. Successful business gurus tell you to move faster, scale bigger, and push harder. When the going gets tough, get tougher. But you know better. Sometimes, you need to slow down long enough to notice what’s wrong, what’s right, and how to move ahead.
When the world slows down, you gain intentionality.
Make Do. Make Better.
When you’re snowed in, you stretch your supplies and find creative combinations that surprise you. That’s not scarcity, that’s innovation.
In business, that mindset sparks resourcefulness. Joseph Sweeney’s Revenue Scaling framework invites you to stop and take inventory of what you have.
1. Customer Acquisition Cost
Add up every dollar you spend on sales and marketing. This includes your software subscriptions, ad spend, networking fees, staff time, commissions – all of it. Then, look at how many customers you brought in during that same window. Divide those two numbers, and you’ve uncovered your Customer Acquisition Cost.
For example, if you spent $10,000 in hard costs and acquired 2 new customers, your customer acquisition cost is $5,000 ($10,000 divided by 2).
Note: On average, B2B service providers spend $5,000 per acquisition. B2B sales are driven through relationships and supported with marketing materials. That means you’ll see a high people cost, and potentially lower dollars spent on ads and other channels. B2C sales are driven by marketing. You’ll see more money funnelled through paid channels, influencer marketing, and the like. Your budget should reflect channels that work for your Ideal Customers and business type. Some businesses have product sales that focus on both B2B and B2C; you need to be aware of these costs and create separate budgets for each purchase journey.
2. Lifetime Customer Value.
Now look at the other side of the equation. How much does a single customer contribute over the length of the relationship? A healthy business runs on a 1:3 to 1:5 ratio. That ratio tells you whether your efforts are paying off, or quietly draining your momentum.
For example, if it costs you $5,000 to earn a client, that client should generate $15,000-$25,000 in return (1:3 = 5:15 = $5,000: $15,000).
3. Retrace your steps.
Look at the customers you won last year. Where did they come from? Referrals? Partners? Events? Email campaigns? Certain wells produce far more water than others. When you identify what’s working, you can double down on it as you move into 2026 and stop pouring energy into channels that haven’t paid off.
Clarity amplifies your resources. Mapping your costs, calculating your acquisition numbers, and retracing where your best customers came from gives you an unobscured view of the landscape. Instead of guessing why momentum stalled, you can see what drained you, what channels reward you, and where the hidden pockets of opportunity might be.
This is what resilience looks like in practice.
No scrambling. No guessing. Optimizing.
Because you’ve done the work, you enter the new year with direction instead of drift. You know where to spend, where to cut, and where your time creates the highest return. You can focus on winning strategies and redesign the ones that falter. Resilience isn’t pushing harder; it’s navigating smarter.
When you optimize what’s already yours, you build business resilience that outlasts any storm.
When the Snow Melts
Storms don’t last. When the snow clears, the most prepared business owners step out stronger than before. You use downtime to clarify your focus, refine your processes, and rekindle the spark that drew you to your passion in the first place.
If your business feels frozen right now, don’t panic. Take a breath. Take a walk. Use this quiet stretch to hone in on your data. You already have what you need. Crunch the numbers. Look at them from every angle. The greatest discoveries are found right where you stand. Use them to adjust your processes or try a different approach. You never know what successes a slow season can bring.
