The following answers are provided by members of Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC), an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. In partnership with Citi, YEC recently launched BusinessCollective, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses.

Write Down Ideas and Save Them for a Slow Day

Always be writing down things that you want to do for your startup that are important but not urgent. It could be a new sales funnel strategy, a new website, or anything that you don’t necessarily need right away. Then, tackle them during slower periods. — Erik Huberman, Hawke Media

Get Involved

Take a moment and get involved with every aspect of your company. By getting involved with the “front lines,” it allows you to see what needs improvement, what needs to be cut out, who is right for each position, etc. Not only does this allow you to get in touch with your employees, but it allows you to have a well-oiled machine that will help you have more time developing new ideas and tasks. — Travis Smith, V.I.P. Waste Services, LLC

Gather Feedback From the Source

There is nothing more valuable than actually speaking to a current customer, past customer, or a prospective client. Spend your down time constructing the right questions by identifying what exactly you want to accomplish out of this survey. Focus on creating a list of survey respondents, setting up a bulk email blast survey, or installing a site survey pop-up. Keep it simple and let them talk. — Nick Chasinov, Teknicks

Brainstorm With Your Team

We are not big on meetings and rarely have slower periods to get together in person, so when they do happen we use the time for team brainstorming sessions. Knowing we have the time to just throw ideas out and feed off each other’s creativity is more productive than when everyone is only thinking about how much they have to get done. — Angela Ruth, eCash

Get to Know Prospective Customers

Entrepreneurs don’t suffer from a lack of ideas — they suffer from a lack of customers. Meet with prospects, walk them through a demo and gather feedback. Then, convert those customer-validated ideas into a great product offering that solves a real problem in the marketplace. Spend your time improving your sales and marketing initiatives, and you’ll never have slow periods again! — David Ciccarelli, Voices.com

Host a Summit

We use our slower season to get the company together for an annual summit. This allows for in-person collaboration while growing a stronger team. By the time the busy season rolls around again, we have a solid foundation for a strong year. — Chuck Cohn, Varsity Tutors

Build and Constantly Refine a Blog List

I make it part of my job to know who is saying the most influential things in my industry. It’s helpful to curate and organize a list of experts who speak to your needs, and then make sure you set aside a little time every week to add or remove them. I use an RSS feed to keep things efficient. — Adam Steele, The Magistrate

Travel and Work From an Inspiring Location

Since my company is seasonal, this gives me a chance to reflect and come up with new ideas to make AquaMobile even better the following year. I travel to an exotic location and work from there. I find my mind can let go, and I am much more creative and innovative than if I had tried to work from my office. I come back full of ideas and ready to hit the ground running! — Diana Goodwin, AquaMobile Swim School

Make a List of Revenue-Generating Activities

Make a list of 50 to 100 actions you can take that will help you generate revenue for your business. These can be anything from booking a speaking engagement to following up with 10 people you’ve met in the last six months. Input equals output, so if you work to drive cash flow, you should see a shift in how often you’re experiencing slower periods, too. — Nicole Munoz, Start Ranking Now

Meet With Inspiring Founders

When times get slow, one great idea is to take a small trip and meet with other entrepreneurs who inspire you. When I meet with other founders, I’m filled with creative energy, new ideas, intelligent feedback and the inspiration I need to innovate. When you visit some friends you know, ask them for other great founders in the area so you can meet them too. — Andrew Thomas, SkyBell Video Doorbell

Mystery Shop Your Own Company

Interview your customers. What do you see happening in the industry? What are your competitors doing? Mystery shop your company’s experience, and go through the process of your customer acquisition strategy. Where were your missed advertising opportunities along the way? Speak with customers you’ve recently lost. This practice will help your business stay innovative and competitive. — Stephen Gill, Tiller

Work on a Side Project

If you spend all of your time working on just your business, you eventually lose the capacity to be creative. It is important to spend time working on things that are completely different from your daily routine to keep those mental juices flowing. — James Simpson, GoldFire Studios

Work on Long-Term Ideas

I have an app and web development company, and whenever we have “slow” time, we create our own apps and upload them in the app store. These help us win customers in the long term. For example, we’ll build a free app for a government agency and use it to market to the government. Do something that would help you win customers, increase your capabilities, or improve your process. — Piyush Jain, SIMpalm

Bond With Your Team

When given the opportunity, I like to walk around and catch up with as many employees as possible. As I hear what everyone’s up to, I’ll pose a question about a project I’m working on, or they’ll tell me what they’re stuck on and suddenly we’re writing on the whiteboard walls about possible solutions. Sometimes just chatting with your people can spark creativity and innovation. — Hank Ostholthoff, Mabbly Originally posted March 30, 2016 on Startups.co.