When Sales Slow, Don’t Panic — Build a Scoreboard

December was strong.

January was soft.

February has been worse.

And here’s what made it unsettling: it’s worse than 2025 — and 2025 had a built-in excuse. DoGE swept through the DMV and budgets froze. People weren’t spending.

This year?

No obvious villain besides an epic snow and ice storm that shut schools down for a week in January.

Just… eerily quiet days.

That’s the kind of quiet that makes you stare at the ceiling at 3:12 a.m. wondering:

What is happening?

For a few days I did what most business owners do when revenue dips.

I speculated.

I blamed the economy.

I refreshed my POS sales report too often.

But then I realized something uncomfortable:

We didn’t have a revenue problem.

We had a churn problem.

The Churn Wake-Up Call

When we pulled a report, only three customers from February of last year ordered again this February.