How To Prepare Your Business For The Holidays | Successful Holiday Season Planning and Launch Tips
good morning or hello whenever you are watching this welcome back to my channel I am Tatiana I'm a business coach and a mentor of a woman wanting to start their own businesses hey we are doing a little Vlog today but I'm also going to be talking a lot about how to prepare your business your shop your products your launches things like that for the upcoming holiday season it is definitely time to be thinking about it if you haven't been already I know in the past I used to be really guilty of waiting and feeling like okay I knew this holiday was coming up like why am I just not sitting down doing this so let's start getting our minds thinking about this early even before quarter four is starting so that we can really get an idea of what we want to do for the holiday season and also start getting ready for the ramp up and priming our audience for what we have to come so we'll be talking about that a little bit but like I said it is a vlog it's a day in the life and today is actually Emery's Birthday y'all if you're new here Emery is my daughter she's turning four today I can't believe it and I also can't believe she's going to preschool today which selfish part of me wanted to keep her home because I'm like it's her birthday like what are we doing here but I have some little cupcakes for her to take for her classmates and I have a little set up for her when she wakes up I'm actually going to get her up a little bit early so she can see a few of her little gifts because what we're doing is she's gonna get some stuff in phases y'all I'm one of them extra moms and I'll be doing the most so yeah because of that um she's gonna be getting some stuff in phases mainly because I know if I give her all her gifts now she's not going to want to go to school she's going to want to play just you know toddler life y'all know if you know but we're going to start off I got her little door decorate I'm gonna show y'all and then I have a little setup of some ponies she's obsessed with My Little Pony right now that is her thing so she's got a little something for this morning I can make her like a little birthday girl breakfast sprinkles on she loves like chocolate toast I'm putting that on there put some sprinkles on there make your birthday like and then um when she comes back home after preschool she'll get her next present and then we have a call with our family if you know our family does not live here and we always like to include them in her birthday so we're doing a zoom claw with our family this evening um while we're doing her dinner of choice which is quesadillas so um we'll be doing that and then we'll FaceTime so they can sing Happy Birthday to her and all of that so I'm sure I'll share some of those clips throughout the day but anyway it is still pretty early I don't is it even seven o'clock yet let me see yeah this is what we're working with y'all 6 58 right now so I'm gonna be waking her up and maybe a good maybe 20 more minutes but look at her door okay so she's also having she's also having a party this weekend and I apologize y'all I like to wear these little glasses but they don't do well with the video so she's also having a party this weekend I won't be filming that but um yeah we're excited for that we're gonna have some friends and everyone come over to celebrate right now I'm making my morning lemon tonic I love this stuff I've talked about it before y'all probably may or may not have heard the name Jessica spiers or spears around here she is a nutritionist that is here on YouTube I found her and I ended up doing a consultation with her um some months back and then I ended up getting her membership so anyway this is one of the things she talks about I'm actually going to link the video if you're interested it's a lemon and ginger tonic it's a very like detoxifying it's a detox every morning it's not anything too crazy though it's not like you're you know on the toilet or something like that it's not like that it's more so I feel like it really helps with immunity it really helps with just feeling good it gets your stomach ready for everything that you're going to eat for the day I've just noticed a lot of benefits with it and so I'll link the videos you can see how she makes it but it's literally just lemon juice Ginger and um what is it lemon juice Ginger and hot water okay so I'm gonna top really quickly about one or two things before I get Emery up for her birthday breakfast but um basically one of the first things that I have some little notes right here and click up so I'm gonna make sure that I don't miss what I wanted to cover with you guys so the first thing I would say is when you are thinking about holiday you always want to think ahead as much as possible so go ahead now and get all of the dates in your calendar so whatever your preferred method is for how you want to track everything if you use click up if you use Trello if you use Google Calendar if you use a paper planner like whatever it is Mark all of your dates down in there don't necessarily leave it to just kind of be like oh yeah I know you know Thanksgiving is on the last Thursday no like literally get those dates and put them in your calendar now as well as any of those social media dates so I saw one really um well I guess it's not really cool but kind of um there's a national Stress Awareness Day for example takes place on November 1st is it um I believe it's November 1st so any social media holiday that really fits in within your specific Niche is what I'll be writing down so if you're into like baking or baked goods I know there are a ton of social media holidays around that so that lasts like two to three months I would get all of those holidays because that's chances where you could do like a special you could run a sale maybe you have like some kind of free item with a purchase or something like that that would be the time to really plan that stuff out and what's nice about it is you can start thinking in advance so first things first Mark all the dates on your calendar and just get everything in line and then you will naturally be set up for wanting to figure out your sales and stuff like that so we already know the big ones Black Friday Cyber Monday like that whole weekend small business Saturday that's a really good time to get into figure out what you want to do a great thing you could do right now is take a look at maybe what some other businesses did last year I always say never copy anybody but get some ideas to help you in the past I've done things I don't even know if y'all can hear me all these sprinkle things so in the past I've done it where my whole shop was on sale so maybe 30 off for example everything now keep in mind this is what I always tell clients when you are pricing products always factor in that you may do a sale at some point and what it would be if you had that sale so you know pricing is going to vary depending on products but when you think about a product that you have and you're like oh I want to make it really affordable but then if you do sales a lot or if you know you do some sales throughout the year then you're maybe shortchanging yourself to where you're making either no money at all or just a little bit so keep that in mind when you are thinking about your sales price so sometimes if that was the case for me I would have it or maybe notebooks were 30 off but maybe something else was only twenty percent off and there's different ways to do that um there's I believe Shopify actually has it set up now where you can do this and you can have like a collection that is off it did not used to be like that before and um if for some reason it's not what you can do is also download apps I'll actually link a couple good ones to look into but there's apps that will allow you to take certain parts of your store and discount it for like a specific time frame and then it'll go back up after which is really really really nice I did that for I think two or three black Fridays and I loved it so yeah figure out what are you going to have that's on sale what is the sale and start thinking now how much it would be off how much you would still make as far as your income from each sale you want to get all of those numbers and everything calculated now and start kind of figuring it out if you're going to do any type of bundles how much are those going to be if you're doing a gift with purchase look into the gift you know how much is that are you going to start getting that now ordering it so you have it in time for your sale and all of that that is what I'll be thinking about right now in this moment is all of the logistics the the dates the timelines what I'm going to be doing how I'm doing it and what I can start preparing right now to get myself ready so if you know that you are a handmade business and you're planning on selling a lot you may want to get started on making some stuff by hand today so then that way you aren't stressed on the holiday season one of the things that always made me grateful of course but it also made me stressed was that it was Thanksgiving to the time of that and it was like exciting because I wanted to decorate for Christmas and stuff and I always will be bogged down by a whole bunch of orders because I didn't necessarily prepare properly always some stuff I might have had ready in advance and some stuff I did and it's just you know the reality of just being me so I am just encouraging you now if you have a lot of handmade products or if you have something you know that might take a while to get here if you're ordering it from somewhere regardless I would start looking into using this month of September to figure those Logistics out and start planning ahead and getting those things ready now so that's the first thing I would do okay so really quickly I'm waiting a couple more minutes and then I'm about to wake Emery up so before I do that I wanted to discuss one other thing so like we were talking about the logistics of everything another thing that I would definitely look into is how you want to do your sales so you could have everything already on sale I'm sure you've seen this before in shops you shopped for in any time of the year where everything's already marked down so you don't need a code or you're going to do a discount code now if you are going to do a discount code what is nice and I'm specifically talking about Shopify because that's the platform that I mainly have used for many years now um You can of course do discount codes and things on other platforms like Etsy and things like that but I'm specifically speaking to Shopify you can have the coupon codes and everything set up to where maybe it only works on a specific product or a specific collection or something like that and you can set the coupon code up to start on a specific date and time and end on a specific date and time so decide now you know how do you want to do it those are the logistics and things that sometimes we don't think about to the last minute like oh yeah I need to make a code you know figure that stuff out now how much everything is going to be what the code will allow for them to do and get money off and everything and then look into some different apps as well there's ones where it can even have like a recommendation app for you too so let's just say you know if someone is shopping they're purchasing and you want to recommend another product that's related that would be great this is the time to start adding these things to your store and playing around with them and learning them now versus waiting until the holiday season and you're already scrambling trying to get things together but you're also trying to figure out all these new apps and things like that take the time to research it and figure it out now again I'll link some of my favorites for you all um below there'll be a blog post along with this video so you can search everything and just kind of see what all there is that I'm talking about but the point is the apps uh where it's at and I mean this is definitely a little hack that I think is great it's just you know you can use it for a couple months and then after that you may not need it in other parts of the year and that's fine okay you know use it for when you need it um I think that that's smart versus just paying for something that you know you don't necessarily need to utilize at other times but the holiday season is kind of a big deal so having all those kind of different things in place can be kind of cool it can make the shopping experience even better for people and all in all I think that it'll make it even better for you because a lot of these apps will take away some of the manual labor and you know getting your store set up and having everything ready to go now I'm going to be talking about this a lot more specifically with my um Community I have a community of ladies that have gone through my program with me and every year around this time we always do an in-depth holiday training so I'm going to be doing that with them very soon but I wanted to share some of these things with you all because again I just think that we know the holiday season is coming up and if you have a business whether product or service based sometimes we just tend to let it slip because you know we're just in the moment right now and then we look up and it's November you're like oh shoot Black Friday is next week what am I doing so this is a great time to start thinking about it now if you do offer services just as much you know you can offer some discounts on things if you have digital products you can offer some money off and with digital products what's really nice too is because there's not a whole lot of upfront costs for digital products and there's not really a ton of manual labor either you can definitely discount them pretty heavily you know if you wanted to I've done discounts where my courses have been 50 off before and things like that and this is a good time to think about you know if you want to do any types of sales like that or if you want to create a special type of product or a special training or a special something for people a special digital product that may only be available for this limited amount of time that's another thing that I think is great too is creating kind of like that fomo in a way for people you know like if you make something that is specifically for that time frame weather physical product or not and you tell them like hey it's only going to be available for this week or you know for this weekend or this specific day that's a great way to get people kind of to make a decision a little bit quicker and I think it's a wonderful way to help yourself get some additional sales because people like oh my god well I need this I need this and so the main thing that we haven't talked about which I'm going to talk about once I get back home from dropping Emory off because I'm getting some birthday stuff with her is how to set yourself up for success for the holidays starting now so I know we're talking a lot about more so the logistics and the business side of things and things to get yourself working I hope you've been taking some notes and writing some things down to start considering now but the second half of this I want to talk about is really some of the kind of like lightweight launching type of things you need to be doing stuff you can be start doing today so that you're priming your audience so that they're ready when it's time for you to sell and there's so many I mean like I used to work at Bath and Body Works for example back in the day and they would do like days of deals and so there would be every single day like the 12 Days of Christmas or something there'll be a different deal every day that's something you can do I've done that before again all of those things get the logistics now so if you're going to do it 12 Days of Christmas if you're going to do an advent calendar or anything like that like right now is the time so that you can be ready to go and you already have the stuff you can start creating the graphics and things for it now um all of that stuff if you start working on it now it will not feel overwhelming when the time actually comes so stick around we'll be talking a little bit about launching and stuff when I come back oh heading back home and I'm gonna make my smoothie I was gonna share also I am doing a series on my channel for the whole month of September and it's all about email list building so I've had so many times I'll mention things about email lists in the past to clients on this channel and people will always be like oh well how do I get started with that how do you even do that how do you deliver things to people you know like all of that stuff so I thought it would be kind of fun to just do an entire month dedicated to a topic and I'm going to try to do that as much as possible on here just to make it so you can kind of have some things that follow each other so definitely make sure you check the link down below I do have a email building checklist that you can get to kind of help you just get started with those steps to figuring out how I really need to get a car mount my phone completely just fell over so next thing I'm gonna invest in is definitely going to be something for the car for both my camera and my phone but anyway um so yeah click the link down below if you just want to have just an idea of what to get started with I know there's tons of content out there but I still want to share what I know in my experience with growing my list I think that it's so important and especially like we've been talking about with just getting ready for the holidays I think now is the perfect time to start growing your email list because you want to get an idea of the people that might have some interest in what you have to sell it gets people kind of ready and so that was really the other part of what I wanted to talk about all about just like getting people primed for your launch and all of that so once I get home and get settled I'll discuss a little bit more about it but either way definitely check out the series there's already probably been a few videos at the point of when this goes up but that playlist will be linked down below as well there's nothing like having what I call your golden list of people that just support what you do they're interested in what you have to say and you are giving them a reason to stick around and want to learn a little bit more so yeah more to come with that outside of that I'm also getting ready to go live today to kick off the series and I'm going to be talking all about kind of the 101 basics of getting started with everything so I always love going live I've been doing it about every other week and it's been it's been really good I definitely love it that's also something I recommend as well for the holiday season too is just putting yourself out there in new ways so if you've never gone live before if you've never done a real before different things like that this is a great time to start doing those kinds of things it'll get your people interested in what you have to do in new ways so you know if they're used to just saying you kind of post pictures you know changing it up and kind of doing some video and going live and trying out reels you know starting a channel things like that this is kind of a fun time to maybe do that and try to reach people in a new way or email list is also good but um if you've never gone live before I challenge you to try to go live at some point Within and before the year is over go live talk about whatever you want to talk about five minutes it could be for 50 minutes I don't care but I think you should definitely go live get comfortable talking about your products talking about your teeth what it is that you offer what you can share with people it is so important to connect in this way and just use all of the different avenues that are available to us out there I'm such a big person about organic reach and growing organically yes there's a whole side of ads and things like that but taking advantage of the free tools that are out there and available to us I think is your first stop so but um yeah I cannot wait for my smoothie I am so hungry I've been doing smoothies for breakfast for shoots since probably like April of this year and usually during the week on the weekends sometimes I'll do a smoothie but usually I'll just eat something now but they've just been so good and I'm gonna make this one it's one of my favorites that I probably make it way too much but it has banana mango spinach cashews which I don't really have a ton of cashews left but I'll just use what I have um chia seeds coconut water spinach did I say spinach spinach is in there it's really really good y'all though I got it from Jessica Spears that's you know that's my thing that's my girl okay she don't know it but she my girl um but yeah so I can't wait to make it it's gonna be so good foreign it's definitely different because the mango was so stuck together I got this one from Trader Joe's usually I get it from like just the grocery store or Natural Grocers but I got this mango chunks from Trader Joe's and the mango is really good but it's like really I have to remember to take it out of the freezer a little bit before I make it because it was just completely in one big Clump but I just did strawberries instead so I love putting my smoothies in these sometimes a lot of times I'll just drink it straight out of here because I have the little clip but sometimes when I'm feeling fancy I'll put it in here I got these from the target Dollar spot and they came in was it a two pack I can't remember if it was a two bedroom it has like a wood top but I'm not gonna put the top on because I'm not getting ready to go anywhere with it but I don't want to spill this so hold up let me concentrate okay yes yeah it looks so freaking good and it is good I just tasted it foreign but I want to show you all my setup for my lives too just in case if you're curious if you because I talked about going live and if you want to do it on YouTube there's a couple of extra steps I guess or at least I take a couple extra steps so I'll show you my setup and then we'll talk a little bit more about um what I was talking about with some of the launch stuff after I go live because let's see I have a little less than 30 minutes so I need to set up okay so I actually need to sit down and respond to some emails too where's my laptop okay let me first of all let's get my laptop okay we need that yeah cause I actually got an email from my one-on-one client one of them she is on a trip and thought she was gonna be able to meet but needs to reschedule so I want to make sure I respond to her on Tuesdays a lot of times I don't really get to email as much but I saw that came in so I want to make sure I respond to her of course I'll usually just kind of take a glance but I really tried to get more intentional about what I do and when because if not my business would take over my life like literally really have no other way to explain it it would take over everything so I've just been trying you know now that I've been doing this for some years now and even with just this newer business the last like year and a half I'm just trying to work smarter not harder and so I have like specific days where I actually will go in and reply to emails D like in detail but things like this if there's clients and stuff that's always a priority so I check my email every day but when I have to do like more thought out responses and stuff I have set days for when I do that okay I'm trying not to get annoyed we have the worst Wi-Fi ever okay like I am so frustrated with it it's not working again it keeps like going out so I think right now will be a good time for me to go ahead and restart it and then I'm actually going to hardwire my computer in because I'm getting ready to go live and I don't want this thing going out like we've been having so many issues sorry because I'm getting ready to go live and I don't want this thing to go out like it's just been a nightmare we actually have a technician coming out later this week because it's just ridiculous we have sparklight and in the area we live in we don't have a ton of options available so it's kind of like two or three options this is actually the best one for the area and it just sucks it's always going out um the lady that I spoke with she was actually saying she thinks that there may be something that they can do for the connection so we'll see since we've lived in this house it's just been like not really the best so while I'm waiting on that startup I can't even respond to my email right now so I'm gonna just get my setup going so let me prop you all up somewhere okay so basically I have my tripod which is the first part of the setup and I'm gonna adjust it down a little bit because it's a little too tall you know that's two because I'm going to be sitting down y'all you would think as much as I do this but I still every time I'm like where do I set this too okay so I like to have it right here in the corner that way when I put my camera on there the light will be right there I'll take my glasses off so I won't have that glare which will be good um let's see so next there's a couple things so I have this power cord for my camera so instead of using a battery for the camera because the batteries tend to die especially like if you're on a live stream the battery would not last very long so I have this little power cord and it just basically keeps it charged so I need to get the the little thing for that and it really just goes right into the camera so it looks just like a regular battery but the only difference is it has this little piece right here that you use and you plug it in so I'll show you all when I get ready to set it up in a second but I need that and this is a Canon M50 camera by the way if you're just wondering like what even is this but um it goes right and you don't even have to have your SD card in for the live stream um because it's just going to be getting saved to whatever platform you're streaming on but just push it in like a regular camera and then open this little rubber piece so that that's exposed and then this is where I'm gonna plug in the power oh wait I need my piece this tripod is always annoying it has an extra piece that is so annoying that you have to put on the camera first and then you can attach it the lights seem to be back on does anybody else just have like horrible Wi-Fi like I just don't understand I don't understand in 2022 I don't understand you know it's just frustrating and we are not paying a little amount for this wi-fi we have like the best package for the reason of like this stuff because I have the live stream I have to upload YouTube videos and stuff and it just okay it's working again I'm still going to hardwire in though I have my little external I have this little piece that is an adapter so that I can plug into my computer while I'm on the live and this is just the hardwired cord into my modem as well as I showed this in the past video but I used this for live streams as well because I need to um plug this in so let me do that really quick and get all this set up oh yes let me respond to her really quick this little piece right here I'm gonna plug everything in that I need I'm not even going to use my dual screen just to make sure my computer is charging the data cable and the data cable goes in here which goes into my computer which goes into the camera yeah I don't even think I was looking at you when I said that I was looking at a completely different direction and then this goes under here all right so this is the setup basically I have my camera here I'm gonna pull out that part and trying to let my computer charge I forgot to let my computer charge while this morning so that was a fail on my part we're only at 21 so we'll see how that goes but um basically in here as you can see this is stream yard so that's what I'm using to be able to go live I already had this scheduled so when I enter the studio because it's almost time yeah they even recommend plugging in the internet so I did it seems to be working now but I don't know what be going on y'all okay so let me exit out of this oh hey takea's joining early hey what's up um okay so I'm gonna add myself to the stream I still need to plug my my camera in but I'm waiting for my computer to charge a little bit more so I have to hold off on that but as you can see here's the live that I'm getting ready to do right now and then I have it's in the planning phase um it's actually about to be getting recorded now but anyway um and then this is all my talking points I'm getting ready to paste this in there because I have a little checklist so I'm going to add that into the live stream here in a second but yeah that is um what I have kind of on the back end when I am doing everything but yeah that's the setup so it's pretty simple not anything super Advanced or amazing and then I end up just using the mic I believe it's the mic for my computer I'm pretty sure and yes so I'm gonna try to chug some of this smoothie I ended up putting the top on there because I had to carry way more upstairs than I remembered so this is what the little top looks like on that if you're wondering but this is really good the other thing I like to do as well is I'll show you all in Click up I have which I like completely redid my click up stuff so I'll have to give you guys an updated look at everything um at some point of just how I have everything set up for my content but on click up I have a different task that is for every live stream every video I do and then anything that I know I want to say I have it pulled up for the live so then that way I'm not like scrambling trying to find notes or anything it's just right in there on the date and I don't really have it in a script I just have it more so just things I want to make sure that I cover while I'm on SO I'm just waiting on it to load I really hope that this internet connection is not ridiculous because it feels like it's about to be ridiculous and I really don't like technical difficulties I know I can't be the only one it is so stressful all right I just got off of that live I had completely stopped drinking my smoothie because I was talking and it was really good it was about 40 minutes long so now I'm just waiting for the video to process I'm getting ready to add in my flow desk link because I talked about flow desk that's my email platform that I use and I have a code to actually get 50 off so it ends up being 19 a month which is really really good for all that they have all the services that you get um so I'm gonna drop that in the description as well and then we can finish up talking about this holiday stuff and I'm gonna get on with the rest of my day I'm gonna um finish up because I need to get the rest of memories to give together so she has like this really big Gabby's dollhouse thing so I need to um finish putting that together I started the other day but I'm gonna have that out for her and then I think the other stuff she has which is not a whole lot after that we'll probably give that to her this evening when we we're doing like a FaceTime with our or we're doing a zoom call with our family tonight for them to sing Happy Birthday to her and we're getting um tap and taco which is our favorite taco place here so that's what we're going to be doing tonight and I have a couple more presents for her to open and then that way Evan will be here with her to open some stuff too and so but yeah so anyway I wanted to quickly talk about the value thing that I mentioned so as you know like I said there's a whole series going on on my Channel right now all about email list building I highly suggest that you tune in this month to um learn or if you happen to see this video later on September of 2022. there's the email list challenge uh or a challenge geez there's an email list series that I have and pretty much the whole point of this is I'm trying to really just stress the importance of providing value to people like now like I just said in that live that I just did you know it's not about being sneaky or you know being like well I'm giving you this access but it's really gonna be for this you know or you know I'm giving you this but it's really going to be the purchase like yes I mean people are aware that you have a business so they know at some point you are going to try to sell something to them they're aware of this you know your business this is kind of like a no-brainer and I think sometimes people can be kind of scared to be salesy and there's a time and a place for that but with this I think right now we are in the beginning of September this is a great time for you to be thinking about okay what is something I can really be providing to my audience now whether it's a very low priced thing or free opt-in for my email list a training um just content online you know topics going live reels posts whatever it is what can I be giving them right now so that they are keeping me top of mind you know I'm being consistent and showing up regularly so that when I show up in November and in December you know doing my 12 Days of Christmas sale and my Black Friday deal and all this stuff it's not literally like well who is this person I've never seen them before now they're asking me to purchase something like you don't ever want it to be that way so that's really why I suggest to provide value and value is going to look different for all of us because we all have different businesses different Target audiences and just different goals for what it is that we're trying to achieve so it's different for everyone but even if let's say if you're trying to launch a course or something like that if you're doing a course um actually because the reason I'm using this as an example is one of the women on the lives was asking about a course I think a great introduction to the course could really be sharing a bit about your process that people will work through in the course and just giving them the steps and telling them why it's important that's a great way because you're getting people aware of what it is that they need to do you know you're teaching them okay this is the process this gets you here now whether they choose to you know DIY it and figure it out on their own or they choose to invest in your course when it comes out you've provided them with a step that's going to help them because now you took something that they had no idea about what to do and you gave them a guide or you gave them a walk through or some steps to help them now be like okay well now I at least know this is how it works this is the steps and that is to me what the value is it's not gonna be so much a coupon code okay um a coupon code is wonderful there will be a time and a place for that you know clearly we got the holiday season coming up there's gonna be plenty of time for selling and um you know salesy emails and reminders that hey this is on sale for the last time there will be plenty of time for that but right now this is such a nurturing time it's kind of slow you know we're not quite into the hustle of the holidays yet so it's just a great time to really get people in is what I would say so that is pretty much it thank you for watching this video I hope that these tips were helpful for you as you're starting to think about the holidays I know I am as well shoot on the business front and the personal front so it's definitely a lot to consider and all of that but yeah I'll see you all in the next one thank you so much for watching bye
2022-09-14 01:47
