Your 1:1 with your manager is the single most important touch-point you have every week. But most people approach 1:1s incorrectly.

• It’s not a status update.
• It’s an opportunity to grow in your career, get unstuck on challenges, and show your boss how much work you’re doing.

Here are three ways to level up your 1:1s with your manager:

Take charge. This may be the only time you have with your manager all week, so you should run the show. While they may bring topics they want to discuss, you should drive the meeting.

Our tip: Create an agenda that you and your manager fill out async at least the day before your 1:1. That way, there are no surprises and everyone’s prepped to have a productive conversation.

Don’t be afraid to brag. Your manager isn’t a mind reader, and humility will get you nowhere—this is your opportunity to talk up your work and remind your manager why they hired you.

Our tip: At the beginning of the meeting, outline your top three achievements from the week and their impact on the team. Just make sure to keep it succinct to avoid laying the self-praise on too thick.

Use 1:1s as mini performance reviews. If you have a good manager (and that’s a BIG if, folks), they’ve probably already structured your 1:1s to keep track of your work and give you feedback on your progress toward bigger goals. But even if your boss is less Ted Lasso and more Michael Scott, you can still use your 1:1 time to prep for your annual performance review.

Our tip: Keep all your 1:1s in a single document by copy & pasting the template to the top of the page but keeping the old agendas below. When performance review time comes around, you’ll have an easy way to see everything you’ve accomplished.

Bonus: Last week when we mentioned 1:1s, we got a lot of requests for where to find an actual template that works. Here’s our Certified Fresh™ 1:1 template that the Raise editors use. There’s no catch: Make a copy here.—KL

In a surprise to no one who’s ever had to circumnavigate a Target parking lot to hit their daily steps, downloads for fitness apps spike over 30% every January.

• Turns out, an obsession with data + planning to be healthy soon = a $45 billion fitness tracking industry.
• And January is the standout month for downloads, with things tapering off by April—presumably when the last of us finally throws in the towel on 75 Hard.

Sure, we all wish our biz would be popular all the time. But the reality is there are ebbs and flows for every company. For example:

• Consumer businesses typically run hot during the holidays, edtech cos often lose momentum in the summer (when school’s out), and coffee shops start losing steam around 3pm on the daily.

No matter what business you’re in, there will probably be peaks and valleys. Here’s how to make the most of the lulls, to prepare for the spikes later on.

Hiring and training. Building up a capable workforce takes way longer than you’d think. (Business Insider reports you’ll need 44 days to go from posting the job description to making an offer.)

• So whether you’re hiring for a new role or investing in on-the-job skills training for your existing team, take advantage of this time when you can actually find 30 minutes on everyone’s calendars.

Brand building. A breather on the revenue generation means you get to spend more time and energy boosting your brand. That could look like investing in content marketing, offering events, or doing general awareness campaigns.

• Bonus: Paid marketing is most likely cheaper for your industry during the off months anyway, allowing you to juice your brand recognition when Facebook ads cost an arm and a leg to run.

Room for testing. A few months of downtime can mean a little less pressure. That should give you and your team the opportunity to try out some fun or innovative new ideas that may end up adding new revenue streams, evening out some of your seasonality, or preventing the team from going stir-crazy with nothing to do.

• If you want tips on how to innovate, check out last week’s edition of Raise.

And when all else fails, just know you can follow Spirit Halloween’s lead and hibernate until next October.

What’s worse than looking up from your keyboard and realizing you’ve been typing in all caps? Having to type in all caps every day because it’s your job.

If you’re wearing a fleece vest right now, all these acronyms have probably already entered your bloodstream. But do the rest of us know our Ps and Ls?

We’ll give you the acronym, and you have to guess the full phrase.

CAPEX & OPEX

EBITDA

M&A

LBO

GAAP

COGS

FDIC

ROE

EPS