When it comes to Christmas, it’s often time for a break, or building up for a business period, or winding down for a quiet period … or simply catching up with associates, friends or families.
Here are My Top Tips for Business Owners Around Christmas
Prep & Planning are Essential
If you’re planning on giving Christmas gifts to clients or associates or referral partners, or sending out Christmas cards, then some pre-planning is ideal. If you’re getting Christmas cards printed, then this month is too late; you needed to have done that months ago. The same goes for branded gifts, such as tea towels, pens, USB sticks, labelled bottles of wine etc. You need to think about these things really around September (or earlier) especially if you need to order in stock and then get it printed. For example, if you want to give the gift of knowledge to any business associates, then my business tip books would make perfect gifts, but you’ll need to get in very soon to get stock in time that you can drop off or gift them. For an extra $5.50 per book, I’ll even add a Christmas card (written on behalf of you) and ship them directly to your client or associates.
Staff Leave & Staff Christmas Parties
Whilst you might be thinking about sales, paying invoices, getting business, organising your BAS lodgement and a string of many other aspects of your business, your staff are hanging out for their annual Christmas party, Christmas bonuses, gifts and their leave. Plan this also in advance; setting dates for events (especially if you’re going out as venues book well in advance). Plan also who will be away and when and will the business close for a period of time. Ensure you are up on the FBT and GST rules around Christmas parties, as doing this a certain way can make things mighty expensive. (Your Accountant can advise you on this matter). If staff will be taking off leave, will you need someone to cover them?
Plan for Busy or Quiet
Some businesses are absolutely not affected seasonally by Christmas or January and others absolutely are. In Australia (especially Queensland), aircon services, lawn mowing and summer-related services are busy over December and January, whilst other businesses wind down substantially. If your business is going to be closed mid-December to mid-January, then really will you have saved enough throughout the year to cover this month of no income; have you got 11 months of income to cover 12 months of expenses? Walking into a quiet spell with little financial backing is not wise. On the flip side of the coin, if December is traditionally hectic for you, do you have casual or relief staff lined up to help? This especially is relevant for retail and hospitality.
Utilise Any Quiet Periods
If say January is a quiet period, then plan to do tasks which are often not urgent, but often get neglected because you are busy. I have a list of things to do which are important, but which are not time-sensitive, and this list includes:
- Updating and refreshing your website – does it look the best it can and is it still current and reflects accurately on what you do? Often, we tweak a little what we are doing or offering, but sometimes forget to update our website.
- The same for social media and online profiles – are these assets current and looking good?
- Blog writing – If you do this yourself, quiet periods are a great time to build up a bit of a stockpile of articles.
- Marketing plan – always refresh and revamp for the upcoming year in December or early January to ensure you’ve got a great plan in place for the upcoming year.
- Financial analysis (and tax returns) – I should say that financial analysis should occur every month (or even weekly) BUT if you’ve slacked off a bit and haven’t looked thoroughly at your financial reports (or worse, your bookkeeping is behind) then take this time to get cracking. Now is also a great time (if you haven’t already) to send your data (or instructions) to your accountant that you’d like tax returns started soon.
- What else? I’ll bet if you sat down, you could prep a list of things to do to improve your business, get caught up and get organised.
Planning & Goal Setting for the Upcoming Year
Whilst I do business planning, goal setting and strategic planning with clients all year round, many clients also like to plan for next year, either in December or January and then be ready to start a fresh year with relevant, current and well-thought-out strategic goals in place. Another important aspect of planning (in my view) is not just having goals, but defining very clear action steps that will ensure the goal actually occurs. Remember, a goal without a plan is just a dream! I can do these sessions in person (Victoria Point) or via Zoom – so if you’d like to know more about them just click here.
Have Your Christmas To Do List
With every business, you’ll want a list of things to do to wind up for the year, action things like Christmas parties, gifts, bonuses, staff schedules, but also things like updated email signatures (which might advise when the office is closed) or which tells you it’s time to put up Christmas decorations, or to alert your security company of dates you’re closed. Also, it’s good to update your Google My Business profile for closure dates and if you’re running an online store where orders are not likely to be filled, then you should put a notice on that. If you don’t have a Christmas To Do list, then I highly recommend you start one this year, save it on your computer and add to it each year when thoughts come to mind. Having checklists means you won’t forget anything important and don’t have to spend time worrying or stressing that you might have forgotten something; the list makes life nice and easy.
Remember to add to your To Do List to book holidays for next year to make sure you as the business owner get a break too! You might even find it really handy to break your list up into months, starting perhaps with September or October and allocating tasks to specific months of the year.
If you’d like to know anything about my services, whether strategic planning and goal setting or ongoing regular coaching, I’d love to hear from you. For suitable businesses (I don’t coach every business and every industry), I’m more than happy to offer a complimentary sample coaching session so you can experience how I operate and the sort of things I offer. This is not a half hour of me doing the hard sell, but is a free sampler, which also includes a business analysis. To learn more simply CONTACT ME and I’d be happy to organise it. My passion is your potential!
