# What to do in a weak month, and why cutting first hurts [Home](https://theonlyaxelj.com/en) › [Study](https://theonlyaxelj.com/en/study) › [Articles](https://theonlyaxelj.com/en/study/articles) author: [Axel Jedlitschka](https://theonlyaxelj.com/en/about) published: 2026-10-13 updated: 2026-10-13 language: en reading time: 4 min topic: Organization source booklet: [It Was a Slow Month](https://theonlyaxelj.com/en/shop/introduction/statistics-conditions) In a weak month the first thing most owners cut is marketing. According to the source, producing comes before anything else, and saving comes after. When the month is weak, the instinct is to cut. Cancel the advertising budget, trim the materials, wait it out. According to the source, that is the wrong order: you produce first, and save later. And whoever leaves a weak month without changing how he works will be back in one. ## What Emergency is Every owner says that the month was slow, and the sentence carries no information. It tells you nothing about how slow, slow compared with what, or what to do about it. What follows it is usually nothing, or panic. The graph can say more. In the table that converts the slant of a graph into the name of a condition, a slight fall or a level line is called **Emergency**. It is the third condition from the bottom of the seven, above Danger and below Normal. So a line that does not move is enough to put you in Emergency. A level line can feel like stability, and by the table it is Emergency. Emergency is also a stage on the way up. According to the source, someone who comes through Danger with its formula arrives in Emergency, and from there, with the Emergency formula, reaches Normal Operation. Emergency is a point on the scale, with a way out of it. Each condition has a formula of its own, and in the Emergency formula the order is critical. ## Produce first The Emergency formula opens with one instruction, and the source stresses that it comes before everything else. For an organization it says promote. For an individual the source translates it itself: you had better say produce. It is, in the source's words, “the first action regardless of any other action”. To produce is to do what brings money in, and get it out the door. Planning, streamlining and analyzing can wait. Suppose an owner in a weak month spends a full week building a CRM, with not one outbound approach to a customer in that whole week. In her next weak month she sends thirty personal messages. The system waits, and the month is not weak. What separated the two months was where she put her time. ## Why saving comes after This is the most common mistake. In a weak month the first thing cut is marketing, and marketing is the action the formula puts first. Cut first, and you cut the very thing that was supposed to get you out of this month. Saving has a place in the formula, and the place is after producing. Suppose an owner in a weak month cancels the advertising budget and cuts back on materials. She did only the saving, and things got worse. The next time she starts with a round of approaches, then changes how she prices, and only then cuts the spending that was not producing. There is one more temptation in a weak month: doing yourself what others in the business do, because it is faster. According to the source, if you are in Emergency and start to bypass, you drop rapidly to Danger. ## Why the weak month comes back There is a step in the formula that almost everybody skips, and it is the one that prevents the next emergency: changing your **operating basis**. Your operating basis is the way you actually work. The source puts the reason plainly. If you went into Emergency, promoted, and made no changes in your operation, you simply head for another Emergency: “That operating basis led you into an emergency so you sure better change it”. This is where the line runs between a business with one weak month and a business with a weak month every year. Producing gets you through the current month. A new operating basis stops the next one from arriving. Suppose an installer climbs out of each weak month with a round of phone calls, then returns to exactly the same routine. He does that for nine years. After one round of calls he sets two fixed hours a week for outbound approaches. That is a change of operating basis, and the weak months disappear. Successful producing has a second side as well. Suppose an installer runs a marketing push that works, and does not prepare for the work that follows. For a fortnight he does not answer the phone, and he earns less than he did before the push. ## What the booklet has on this In It Was a Slow Month, this chapter gives the full Emergency formula with every step in order, including the last one, without which even a success can create a problem. It ends with two exercises: act, and decide. In your next weak month, start with what brings money in, and leave the scissors for last. - [It Was a Slow Month](https://theonlyaxelj.com/en/shop/introduction/statistics-conditions): Three numbers, a table that turns a slant into a condition, and seven formulas. --- [עברית](https://theonlyaxelj.com/he/study/articles/what-to-do-in-a-weak-month) · [Español](https://theonlyaxelj.com/es/study/articles/what-to-do-in-a-weak-month)