How to Balance Your Business and the Holidays

by | Blog

The holidays are upon us, and while this is generally an exciting, loving, family-filled time for people working a traditional 9 to 5, the holiday season can mean something entirely different for an entrepreneur. For business owners, you have to figure out a way to balance your family and your business without letting either go underwater.

This can easily cause utter exhaustion. 

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Answering emails while cooking green beans. Keeping up with business projects while wrapping presents and decorating the Christmas tree. It’s altogether too easy to become overwhelmed, cranky, and ultimately exhausted by all the family and business tasks at hand.

So how do you balance your business and the holidays without dropping the ball for either?

Check out these 4 Tips for Balancing Business and the Holidays

1. Make Your Business as Lifestyle-Friendly as Possible

Balancing your business and the holidays well depends on your willingness to balance your business and your life well. The secret here is making sure your business is compatible with the lifestyle you want to live.

This might mean something different for different people, different preferences, and different businesses, but for many situations it means making sure you can bring your business wherever you go. Configuring your business so you can work from the comfort of your own home or from Wi-Fi signals so you don’t have to be at the office in order to complete it will save you a great deal of stress and headache.

Achieving a work/life balance might also mean having boundaries set in stone, such as no work after 5pm, on weekends, or on holidays. Set the expectations clear for yourself, your family, and your clients and then stick to them, even if you’re losing a couple of days per week during the holiday season. 

2. Make Sure You Are Generating a Passive Income

If you can’t figure out a way to make money while you sleep, then you will always need to work. This is an exhausting, never-ending uphill climb that could easily be remedied with a few smart fixes. Find ways to automate aspects of your business so you can generate an income without having to physically be working 100% of the time.

In most cases, this means selling classes or products on your website, orders that are automatically fulfilled and don’t require action on your part to earn money. Be it an E-book, deep-dive course, or physical product, finding a means of generating a passive income will give you so much more freedom and peace of mind during the holiday season.

3. Plan Ahead and Prioritize

You know the holidays are coming well before they get here. While you can’t predict everything, you can plan ahead for most things. Identify what needs to be done before the holidays and prioritize these tasks, then act on them accordingly.

Get everything taken care of that can be taken care of ahead of time. Do as much as you can to set yourself up for success on the other side of the holidays. Set your plan so well so that, once it’s complete, you can allow yourself a peaceful, restful holiday. 

4. Avoid Stressing Needlessly

Things aren’t going to go as flawlessly as you may want them to. You obviously want a perfect balance between your life and your business, to thoroughly enjoy your family and the holidays but also to keep your business working optimally. Unfortunately, that’s probably not going to happen… but it’s okay. Enjoy the season anyway.

Your business will survive a couple of days without you working 100%, just like your family might need to survive you answering a couple of late emails here and there. Spend some time with your family and friends anyway. Enjoy the fruits of your labor. You might come to realize that a small bit of time away from your business allows you to recharge, restore, and  come back to work better than ever!

If you need extra help setting up systems for your business click here and schedule a call with me and let’s see how I can best support you!

Have a great week!

​Robyn

Why you need to plan ahead for marketing success

Why you need to plan ahead for marketing success

by | Blog, Marketing, Systems and Procedures

We know that one can attain some success by using last-minute marketing campaigns, but we also know that the key to success is… planning ahead.

Look at your marketing strategy more as a marathon instead of a sprint- even in the age of instant information and social media, it takes time to build trust and get noticed by your target audience.

Here are 3 tips to help you during the planning stage of your marketing campaign:

#1 Intentional Strategizing 

When you plan ahead, you have time to sit down and decide exactly what you want to achieve and how to do it. This will help you to stay focused and not get sidetracked easily by impulsive ideas. I suggest using a big calendar to put up on your wall where you see it every day, with all events and promotions marked for the coming 6-12 months. This way you can easily get started on projects before deadlines. If you aren’t a fan of wall calendars you can also use a google calendar where you can input your events and promotions and even color code them.

Remember, marketing is never a “one-and-done” proposition. It takes time to get the message out and get people to answer your calls to action. They’ll need to see them in multiple ways. Create a separate plan for each product and marketing channel.

#2 Stay Ahead Of The Competition

You should be looking at your marketing strategy for several months ahead. There are certain times of year that your potential customers are more likely to buy and you can use marketing data to determine these times. Then, you can map out and plan everything in advance. When you enter prepared for a summer sale, Black Friday offer or Christmas product, instead of panicking that you don’t have anything ready and throwing something together, you will cruise in like Santa on his sleigh, with all the hard work behind you. And hopefully the competition as well! 

#3 Less Stress & More Success!

I know for some it can be exhilarating to fly by the seat of your pants. But if you want your company to succeed and LAST, you need to be focused on the big picture. Patience and intentional planning will pay off in the end. Dig in your heels and do what it takes to set up your company (and yourself) for long-term success. When you are planning all the projects for a marketing campaign 2-4 months before it launches, you will do it with a level head. If you wait until the week before to throw it together, you will feel stressed, and this will impact not only the quality of work but also your quality of life. 

As you can see, learning to plan ahead has many benefits. Even if you are use to doing things last minute or enjoy the pressure of a fast deadline, you can learn to plan in advance and use more of your energy towards the success of the launch. 

If you are feeling overwhelmed or you need support for your next big launch, book a discovery call with me. I would be happy to spend some time going over your launch idea to see how I might be able to help ease the stress and improve your success.

Have a great week!

Robyn Bennett 

 

PS: Remember that you don’t have to go it alone, you can reach out and get the support you need to reach your goals, click here and let’s chat.