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Prepping your business for the holidays

If you run your own business this is the busiest time of the year! Whether it’s shipping out products, crafting out graphic designs for your clients or plugging away at end of year spreadsheets, it’s a crazy time for everyone.
That being said, just because you’re busy with life, kids, and keeping your customers happy doesn’t mean you should let the business basics become a disaster.

Here are 4 easy ways to keep on top of your business this holiday season.

Update Your Website

This is your front door of your business! Update it! All the exclamation points here!!!!!! Update your hours, your inventory whatever you need people to know at a minutes notice. Make sure all the links work so that if someone needs to get a hold of you, it’s easy to see.  This will save you a lot of time down the road as you won’t have to answer the same question over and over again.

If you own an online store this is true times a million. Your customers are purchasing products for a very specific date (December 25th), and if it’s not available you’re going to have very upset (ie: mad) customers and mad customers are hard to convert to repeat customers. If there are shipping deadlines, these need to be marked clearly, very clearly.

Update Your Social Media Channels

Another basic that gets left off during busy times. Make sure you’ve updated your website, hours of operation and times you’re going to be unavailable over the holidays. This is the internet and people expect you to be available unless you let them know.

This is also a good opportunity to post on social media some of the fun things you’re doing to prep for the holidays. Post pictures of your Christmas parties, or that hike you took, engage with your audience.

Talk To Your Clients.

Everyone is snowed under (almost literally) in November and December but not returning emails or communicating with your clients is for amateur hour, and you’re a professional. Making sure your customers’ life is easy-peasy will ensure that they hire you over again. When life gets crazy for many of us our instinct is to hide and suffer through the work, but sometimes it’s good to talk to your clients and discuss expectations and realities of projects. Sometimes it’s just nice to check in and say hi to the people that pay you money. They’re busy too and would probably appreciate a friendly voice.

Hussle Hussle Hussle …. Breathe.

You’ve already got hussle but one of the worst things you can do in crazy busy time is to burn out. A burnt out mom and a burnt out business owner means despite your intentions, nothing gets done. Entrepreneurs burnout is a very real problem with business owners trying to do everything, and then add being a parent on top of that. It’s easy for exhaustion and being overwhelmed to set in. To avoid this set your working hours and stick to them. When your workday is done, close the laptop and go hang out with your family, get outside, throw a snowball at your kids, get some Christmas shopping done. Do anything except work.

During your work hours, make sure that you are managing your expectations on what can ACTUALLY get done in that time and not what you’d like to get done in that time. What you’d like to get done and what is reasonable to accomplish in a period of time are often two separate things especially in high achievers.

Running your own business is tough especially if you’re running a business around your kids. During busy times of the year it’s near impossible to focus on the basics but little touches will help keep you sane and look like a pro.