Tina Tower [00:00:00]:
Hi, friends. Welcome to her Empire Builder Show. I am your host, Tina Tower. And welcome. If you're listening to this live to December. It's the most wonderful time of the year. It is nearly Christmas time. I love Christmas.

Main Episode

Tina Tower [00:00:18]:
My tree went up on the 1st of November. I would have it up even longer if I was allowed. But I love this season. I love it. And so what today's episode is all about is the entrepreneur's holiday survival guide, setting you up for a really great Christmas holiday. And the first question with that is to holiday or not to holiday? Now, I used to be a no to the holiday. One of the things that I loved so much about that sweet spot period between Christmas and New Year was everybody was off, no one was calling, no one's emailing, no one's doing anything. And I was able to just like do relaxing work, like just putter in in my pajamas, in my swimsuit, jump in the pool and then come in, do a little bit of work and just uninterrupted.

Tina Tower [00:01:11]:
You know when you're like clearing your inbox and then it gets filled quicker than it gets cleared or you're clearing your to do list and the to do list grows quicker, you're clearer than that. Doesn't happen in the magical time between Christmas and New Year. And so I used to take that time to catch up on everything, get everything working well, get on top of things before the new year. I don't do that anymore. For the last couple of years, I have taken the whole month off from mid December to mid January. For the couple of years before that, I was taking two weeks off that it kind of expanded to three weeks and then it expanded to the whole month. And I love that because it's quiet. I can be quiet too.

Tina Tower [00:01:54]:
And so I really wanted to take that time. And I think for the holidays, they're right around the corner. And while it is a time of celebration, it can also be overwhelming to actually think about stepping away from your business. If you are wanting to. It can feel like, is it gonna break if I'm not there? How's it all gonna run? And so I am here to show you how you can set yourself up for a stress free Christmas break. So by the end of this episode, you will have an action plan. You will be able to get access to everything that you need. I do have this plan written down for you.

Tina Tower [00:02:32]:
So if you go to herempirebuilder.com Christmas, you will get. Oh, no, that's not correct. If you go to. So that is our 12 days of Christmas sale, if you want that. But if you go to herempirebuilder.com break, that will give you your break Christmas plan that you can implement straight away or you can just DM me on Instagram break and you can get that as well. What we're looking for is a couple different things. We want to avoid last minute stress. So planning ahead.

Tina Tower [00:03:06]:
It's the start of December now. Now is the time to start putting your plans in place, whether or not you, you want to leave on 20 December, or whether you want to leave on Christmas Eve or what you want to do, like how you're going to put that in place. So planning ahead allows you to avoid that holiday rush and you don't want to be overwhelmed right before you go in the break. I know that when I used to say back in my early business days, so I had a toy store was my first business. So from 20 to 24 I ran a toy store and I would like, Christmas Eve was obviously massive. It was one of the biggest, biggest days of the year. And so by the time it actually got to Christmas, it would be like you'd just be collapsing into a heap. And so I couldn't enjoy Christmas like I do now.

Tina Tower [00:03:55]:
For a couple of years. I even worked on Christmas morning and opened the shop because what I found out was in Cronulla mall, was the main mall that I had my store in. I saw a lot of families walking about on Christmas morning and so I was like, oh my gosh, I'm just going to go in and open the shop and see if anyone comes in. And it was huge because people are like, let's just get one more thing or we're going to this party and we forgot to get them a present or we could get them something else. And so it always like I collapse in a heap after Christmas. And so that is something I've worked really hard on now is to not push myself so hard that you get to the holidays and you just kind of, you know, it's just like your battery is below 1%. You want to kind of get to the holidays at about 50% so that you can recharge to 100 by the time you come back again. So we're looking at planning ahead so that we can avoid that last minute panic.

Tina Tower [00:04:47]:
We are also looking at maintaining business continuity, thinking about if you're going to switch off for a couple of weeks, which I highly encourage every business owner to do. Because while a lot of people are like, you know what I like to do the work when there's no one there. I get that. I did that for many, many years, as I said. But it's also this precious time that you get to have a real break and you need it throughout the year. Because when I look at it and go look at our employees, for example, when we've got team, they get four weeks off in holiday leave a year and then if you're in Australia, you get an additional four weeks worth of public holidays that they get eight weeks off work. Are you taking all the public holidays off throughout the year? Are you taking four weeks off in holiday leave? Probably not. And so what I am looking for is just give yourself this break.

Tina Tower [00:05:43]:
Just be able to have it with the rest of the world, feel wonderful about it. And how can we keep business not only sustaining over that time, but growing over that time as well? Even if you're away, your business doesn't have to stop. With the right systems in place, things will keep running smoothly. Things like autoresponders and I've got some funny examples in the break guide. So again, hermpirebuilder.com break if you want that one, I've got some good autoresponders that you can feed into ChatGPT to get your own brand voice on there. It's setting up things like if you're running a Facebook group, prefacing that with our team will be away from this date to this date you have a couple of different because I know a lot of people that are listening maintain a Facebook group for their clients. So there's a couple of different options that you have with that. I keep mine open and I just tell people that because my whole team is away for the two weeks, I'm away for the four weeks.

Tina Tower [00:06:37]:
So I will let everybody know those dates so they know not to expect a response. Some people will go, I don't want to risk my group going rogue while I'm away and I'm not checking it. And so they will turn like disable the group for that period of time. I don't do that with my group because, well one, I have pretty well behaved people. It doesn't really run the risk of going rogue. But also I know that for some people when they're quiet like that, they'll get a strike of inspiration and want to jump on and want to bounce ideas off each other and get that creative juices going. So I leave it open for that as well. So just because you're taking time off doesn't mean your business has to what we want to do is we want to set up the systems so that it's moving while you're recharging.

Tina Tower [00:07:24]:
Also, we want to prevent financial slowdowns. So say you're going to take a month off, that does not mean you're not going to make money for a month. You can put things in your business so that you're making money while that time happens. So for us we've got 12 days of Christmas promotion, which goes. It's on now actually, if you're listening to this live. So it goes from the 1st to the 12th of December and that is a way to get those sales moving while we are coming into that Christmas period. So having that revenue flowing even during your absence, because the last thing that you want is that financial dip while you're off celebrating. You want that to still feel flowing and that feels amazing when your business is making money.

Tina Tower [00:08:06]:
When you're off, it's a whole other level unlocked of feeling really great. So how you're going to prepare your business for the break, the first is automate whatever possible that you can. So you're going to set up your automation for email marketing. So any funnels or email sequences that you're going to have, just know you're going to get a hell of a lot of autoresponders. That's okay because most people aren't disciplined. So I will do like a special offer. So we have. I'm going to let you in on a little secret Aligned Life Reset, which is like our New Year planning course that will go out on the 1st of January with a special offer.

Tina Tower [00:08:43]:
So for that one, when I first did that, I was like, should I even send it out? No one's checking their emails. But I got all the autoresponders in the land. However, it sold really well because nobody else is emailing at that time and a lot of people are taking a little sneaky, sneaky look at their emails. So while they should be off enjoying their holidays, they're like, I'm just going to have a little check, just going to make sure everything's running okay. And then they're seeing that offer and they're like, actually that's what I want right now. So if you've got something that's pertinent to people wanting it over the holidays, setting up those emails in advance so they're going out will be happy days. Okay, so you want to automate, you want to do your email marketing schedule in all your social media schedule in all your sales so that everything goes out without your direct involvement. Automation is your holiday's best friend.

Tina Tower [00:09:34]:
This goes for Christmas, this goes for anytime. Schedule everything, then you can fully step away. You want to outsource all your tasks. So looking at your tasks, you're going to batch everything as much as possible before you go. But this is also a good time to go. Can you lean on your team a bit more? So if your whole team is off, different story. So my team's off for two weeks, I'm off for four. But if like for that two weeks, they're not going to do anything either.

Tina Tower [00:10:01]:
Mind you, my head va Chris, he always takes a little look see on holidays just to make sure everything's running okay. Which, you know, the boss in me wants to say, take a full break, take it so you can recharge. But I'm also super thankful that he does it because that means I don't have to. It means I can fully trust in him and let that go. And he's just like peeking. So he says he does 15 minutes every couple of days, just jumps into the Facebook group, makes sure there's no members waiting for something or looking for something and just tries to help them out where he can. And I make that up to him in other ways, but I'm very glad that he does that. So see if you can outsource as many tasks as you possibly can.

Tina Tower [00:10:45]:
Like this is the perfect time to lean on your team, hand off any customer support that you can, and then you might maintain that after the holidays as well. You want to pre schedule all your content. So any newsletters that are going out. I don't send newsletters while I'm off because I tend to write them in real time, like on the day that they go so that it's really relevant. But I schedule in all our social media anything else that needs to go out. All of our podcasts, we've got two weeks off the podcast while the holidays are on because the team is all off then as well. And create an out of office hours plan. So the biggest thing is people won't begrudge you having time off as long as your clients are aware of it.

Tina Tower [00:11:22]:
So you want to have. Communication is crucial as far advance as you can, let your clients know when you'll be off so that they know when to expect a response or so that they know, hey, if I want an answer on this, I know I need to get that in like a couple of weeks beforehand. Because you want to set those boundaries clearly. Like no one minds as long as you Keep your promises. I know like an example of this done wrong is I know I won't name the name, but someone that did like a 12 week coaching block offer. So they're high up in the coaching industry in Australia. They sold this 12 week coaching block offer and then they went on vacation to Spain. And so that was in the opposite time zone and they just had all these people pay an absolute fortune to sign up for private coaching.

Tina Tower [00:12:11]:
And they were like, oh, I now need to change all the times because the time zone's different and I'm not going to be as available for questions in the off times. It just like changed the perspective and so many people were left with a bad taste in their mouth because the expectations that were set up were different to what's delivered. And I contrast that with one of my beautiful friends, Kemi Neckvopil, who's an absolute frickin legend and one of the most boundaried people I know. She actually wrote a book on it called Boundaries. Is it called Boundaries? I think so. She's written Power, she's got a few books that are really, really fantastic. But when she set up her mastermind, she sets it up and even on the sales page it says I'm uncontactable on these months of the year. And she takes off like a solid month in winter, she takes off at Christmas time.

Tina Tower [00:13:00]:
She does it in a way so that when people are signing up to that, it's not like she ever has to feel guilty or bad or that she's letting people down when she's taking a vacation. Because that's the deal, the deal. I'm uncontactable in these times because she's so good at recharging and having this and that in her life. I think we could all take a leaf out of Cammie's book. She puts me to shame with the way that she does it. As long as people know upfront, totally, totally fine. Now when it comes to financially planning for the holidays, look at if it's appropriate for your business to run some sort of holiday promotion or some sort of flash sale in there so you can use the holiday season to generate revenue with a special promotion or a flash sale before you step away or even while you're stepping away if they are more diy like low cost, high volume sort of products. So I think holiday promotions are a really great way to bring in like that burst of revenue before you take off.

Tina Tower [00:13:57]:
So think like limited time bonuses or festive bonuses. For us, we're doing 12 Days of Christmas. So we've got a different product each of the days for 12 days that we've got a special on. If you want to see that, you can go to herempirebuilder.com christmas or just DM me the word Christmas. And then you will see all of those sale offers in there as well. The other thing you can do before you leave is review your budget and your cash flow. So making sure that you've planned for any holiday expenses, any direct debited bills, making sure that your cash flow is nice and steady before you go into the year so that you're not going to default on anything while you're away in there as well. I think the end of the year is a great time to review your budget, review your expenses, to look at your investments, to like draw that line in the sand and document those things in there as well prepare for any tax obligations.

Tina Tower [00:14:49]:
So in Australia we actually get extra time to lodge our bas, like our quarterly taxation over the Christmas period, which is great, but you want to be in the situation depending on when you're taking off. So I know a lot of people take off all of January because their kids are on vacation as well from school. And so you want to make sure you're not scrambling at the last minute. Prepare whatever you can in advance so that you can actually enjoy that downtime and you're not like hanging over your head going, oh my gosh, when I come back, I'm going to get slammed. That's the worst feeling ever. So we want to front load as much as we possibly can. The next is setting up your personal boundaries for rest and richer. So you want to set clear work hours or no work hours.

Tina Tower [00:15:36]:
So when you're going in for this holiday period, you can decide ahead of time whether you'll be completely unplugging or what your rules for yourself are going to be like. Are you going to have social media on your phone? Are you going to check it once a day? Are you going to check your emails once a day or are you going to block yourself so that you can only check it once a week or are you going to not check it at all? I would use Opal for that. So there is an app called Opal which I'll link in the show notes for you. It is fantastic. It has changed my life with the way that I use my phone and distracting things because it's really hard to have self discipline to consume less than what we are. I will put the blocker on and it's one of Those things that there are some weekends that I will turn mine off. So mine's scheduled to go on from Thursday night to Monday morning. Rarely does a weekend go by that I won't check it at all.

Tina Tower [00:16:28]:
But what Opal does that I really like is you've got to hit the button to unblock, and then it'll make you wait like 15 seconds. And the screen goes, breathe in, breathe out, relax. And it gives you that 15 seconds to go, do I really want to see what's going on? Do I really need this or not? And sometimes I'll just go, no, I don't need it. And I'll turn it off. Usually I go on just to post a story. That is my biggest thing is I'm like, I want to post this Instagram story. So I'll go and post it and then I'll get off again. So I recommend using Opal if you need restrictions based on yourself to get completely off the grid and get that out of the way.

Tina Tower [00:17:07]:
Like I said, set expectations with your clients early. Let them know when you'll be back and how to handle situations in your absence. I know that back in 2015, so a long time ago, my husband and I, we went on a family holiday. We were getting married again for our 10 years, which we do every 10 years. We actually just had our 20th. But then I wanted a break. I hadn't had a break in about four years. I was running the franchise.

Tina Tower [00:17:36]:
I was really pushing myself hard and I was desperate for a break. I needed it. And so what I did in my email autoresponder was I said, I'm not looking at my phone. My phone is completely switched off. I'm not even turning it on because I know I have no self discipline. And as soon as I see something, I will be thinking and obsessing about it and I will have to respond. I will not be able to leave it alone. So what I did was I turned my phone off and I put my husband's phone number.

Tina Tower [00:18:01]:
And I was like, if you need me, contact Matt and tell him why you need me. And then if he deems it important enough, he will get me to respond. And nobody did, which was great. So you can get really creative depending on your level of self discipline and your level of boundaries that you want to be able to have in there as well. Because I think that having a full mental break, especially when we're so overloaded in this day and age with constant communication and information, a full mental break can feel absolutely delicious for your nervous system. So the holidays, like, I think they're for rest and reflection and relaxation. So you can use this time to recharge. And then you'll come back feeling so refreshed, so excited, ready to tackle that new year.

Tina Tower [00:18:53]:
So if you. Yeah, like I said, if you want this plan, just go to her empire builder.com break and you can get this whole plan there. Okay, next thing is to organize your to do list. So as you're coming in now, if you're listening to this pretty live and it's the start of December, you can look at how many working days have you got between now and when you want to take the break. And what I start doing is actually making two to do lists. When I have the idea, oh, I need to do that, I want to do that. Like all the different things that I want to tick off and do. I will have two different to do lists.

Tina Tower [00:19:26]:
One is BB and one is ab. BB is before break, AB is after break. And so I'll start adding them. Okay, these are the things that must be done before I take this month off. These are the things that I want to do, but I can do them when I come back from the break. And so I'll put them in a different list so that I'm not looking at everything, one, and getting overwhelmed. But two, I don't feel like I need to do everything now. These are some things that I know the business needs, but they don't need it right now.

Tina Tower [00:19:57]:
So it can go in after the break. The next thing I do is when I'm coming back, I won't ever plan any appointments or schedule any calls or anything like that on the first day. I'm going to give myself the whole first day as a planning day. Because if you're anything like me, when you take a break, that is when you get super creative. That is when ideas start going off in your head like fireworks. So I actually think one of the best things you can do for your business is let your brain have this downtime because it pays off. You start having all these ideas all over the break. I'm writing down different ideas.

Tina Tower [00:20:34]:
I've got all these different things. So I want that first day instead of going straight into reaction mode and sprinting to catch up on everything, I'm going to take that first day and I'm going to implement a whole lot of the ideas that I had. I'm going to organize a lot of my thoughts. I'm going to have it as a holistic planning day on that first day. So I Get that admin done. And then I have that feeling where I'm starting ahead rather than always feeling behind. Because you can get in stages in your business where you feel like you're behind and it can take months to not feel behind anymore. So you don't want to start the year off like that.

Tina Tower [00:21:10]:
So what I think is, if you want to take the break, with a little bit of planning and preparation, you can fully enjoy the holidays. You don't have to work non stop. We are not designed to work non stop. I say this as someone who has worked non stop a lot. So I'm not like, you know, I'm not shaming anyone. That's going to work because I did it and I don't regret doing it because at the time it was appropriate for my stage of business was also really helpful. It did get me ahead. But I'm really glad I don't feel the need that I have to do that all the time now because it is so much more beneficial.

Tina Tower [00:21:50]:
Like that whole slow down to speed up notion is true that when you slow down sometimes, when you take a break, when you take a rest, that is where your best ideas will come from. So take the break and then let's make the plan now. We've got another couple of weeks of the podcast before we break for Christmas, so I won't say Merry Christmas, but Merry Christmas because it's the best season ever. And if you want this whole plan all written out and all of the tips and tricks, go to npaibuilder.com break and you can get that. All right, have the best day. And I hope your Christmas tree is up. Festive season already. Yay.