Four Tips for Political Businesses This Year: An Expert Weighs in

If you feel like your political business is floating adrift in the off-year, you’re not alone. 

After every election cycle, many firm founders and leaders are left to grapple with financial uncertainty, hard staffing decisions and the question of when new business will begin coming in. 

Michelle Coyle, the founder and CEO of the Political Business Institute, spoke with C&E at the 2025 Reed Awards in Austin, Texas last week on her tips for political businesses in the off-year. Here’s what she had to say:

1. Examine Your Operations

For businesses worried about the down time between now and the next election cycle, Coyle has a simple piece of advice: take a breath and look inward.

“What I hear a lot right now in this cycle is: ‘Oh my god, we gotta find new clients. We’re living off the money that we made last year. We’re freaking out,’ ” Coyle said. “What I want to direct focus to is, look, those clients are going to come in. You know that they always do. It’s always a month or two later than you want it to be, but they are coming.” 

“This is actually a good time when things are slower to look at your operations, look at your staffing, look at your systems — all those things that you don’t really have time to do when your hair is on fire,” she added.

2. Invest in Training

Coyle said that now is a good time for firms to start training their next generation of leaders. Instead of waiting for hiring to ramp up, she said, firm founders and leaders should begin laying the staffing framework for the next election cycle sooner rather than later.

“Train your people that are going to be the upper-middle managers now. Send them to management training now. Send your people to sales training now,” Coyle said. “This is the time to really uplevel those skills and then again create those systems, so that when we’re bringing people in quickly on lower levels, we have something we can onboard them into really quickly.”

Coyle said that now is also a good time for firms to touch base or build connections with vendors and contractors, so that when business begins to ramp up again, those networks are already in place.

“The other thing I love is just having a whole bench of contractors and vendors, so that it doesn’t always  have to be W-2 hires that you’re bringing in to do everything,” she said.
“When you’ve got people that are really really good at their piece of the puzzle and what they do, have those people ready to go.”

3. Focus on Your Finances

If your cashflow is slowing down – or nonexistent – right now, don’t sweat it, Coyle said. 

“It’s okay to draw down on your cash reserves,” she said. “This is a cyclical business.”

Refusing to touch your cash reserves in the off-year is like a squirrel refusing to eat the acorns it stashed away for winter, Coyle said. Of course, she added, firms still need to be careful with their resources, and now might be a good time to work on relationships with financial institutions. 

“On the flip side of that, we don’t want to get so comfortable doing that that we’re letting people float that shouldn’t be there anymore and just kind of resting on our laurels,” she said. “There’s got to be a happy medium. One thing that we work with a lot…is getting relationships with the bank going, getting lines of credit going. Just having ways to manage cashflow so you’re not bootstrapping all the time.”

4. Rethink Staffing

Staffing needs, necessarily, change in the off-year; an employee who worked on one thing last cycle might not be needed this time around. Coyle said that it’s important for employees to be flexible in their roles and willing to take on new challenges in the off-year.

“Especially in a small business, we really want people that can flex into different roles a bit,” Coyle said. “That’s really important if somebody can wear multiple hats. And so if they’re in more of an account executive role during an election, they might need to switch into more of a sales role this year.” 

If you’re running into challenges keeping certain employees busy, Coyle said, it might be worth considering dialing back on full-time workers and looking more at bringing in contractors instead.

“I love folks who can wear multiple hats as W-2 employees,” she said. “If you’ve got somebody that’s really good at one thing, that might be better as a 1099 or a contractor if you honestly don’t need them 40 hours a week and you need them five or 10 hours a week.”