BIRD WILLIAMS: You're listening to Bird Means Business Episode 94. 

Hey, y'all, thank you so much for tuning into Bird Means business podcast. I am your host, Bird Williams. And first of all, before we get into the episode, y'all, we are at 94 whole episodes! What?! My mind is blown. I think the stat is that most podcasts get to like seven episodes or ten episodes or something like that. So I'm just gonna take a little moment to celebrate 94 whole episodes. Thank you all so much for journeying with me through this entire process - for tuning in, for sharing about the podcast, for writing a review. That's huge. I really, really appreciate it. And it helps give me the motivation to keep going. 

I want to make sure that I mention this really quickly for those that don't know. First, we're gonna be talking about how to plan ahead for the busy holiday season in this episode. It's going to be a quick one. But I think it'll really give you some tips on some things to think about as you are navigating your holiday season in your business. 

But before we get into that, I want to mention that I have some really awesome resources at birdwilliams.com/resources. So there's a whole bunch of free downloads. There are things like considerations for a commercial lease agreement, how to plan for a photoshoot. If you're going to do a brand photoshoot, the fall is a great time to do that, especially here in Houston when it's not as hot, and my hair will blow up in the humidity. So I'm always trying to plan my photoshoots in the fall or maybe even in the early spring. But I have a whole podcast episode and a free download for how to actually think about the different shots you want to get and how to make that time in your photoshoot more effective. 

I have free downloads about how to choose an entrepreneurial endeavor. There are journal prompts for that. I have a social media content planning template, and probably most relevant I have a year end business checklist. That's where we really think about okay, we're at the end of the year. What are all the things that I need to think about so that I can end the year strong? 

So there's tons of resources there. I want to make sure that you know that it's there. You're going to go to birdwilliams.com/resources. You'll see all of the different free downloads there. You'll click on it. It'll take you to a landing page and you'll put your email in and be able to download that freebie for free. 

Alright, let's jump right on into the episode. So I love to plan ahead. And I'll just be honest with y'all this episode was actually supposed to go out last week. But my life is cray-cray. I should just go ahead and share here on the podcast if you don't know yet. Okay, so if you don't know me, I have a gym business here in Houston. It's called The League. It's my first business. I launched it back in 2013 with my best friend and husband, Terry. We were kids. I was, I think, 24. He was 26 when we launched The League. Didn't know what we were doing, made all kinds of mistakes. But the business really took off very quickly. And I share a lot about all of that on the podcast. Terry has actually been on the podcast so much. 

And long story short, and I'm going to actually have him on to talk about the franchise. But we have decided to franchise The League. We've gotten interest in franchising over the years. And to be honest, I was just like, man, how do you really protect a brand, whenever it's franchised, and you can't control it as much, and you have to really rely on your franchisees to protect that? And anyway, we decided to move forward in that. And we are so excited. Like I said, there'll be a whole podcast episode on that. I'll do that with Terry, here soon. 

But because of that, it has been lit. I have been so busy trying to manage that. I just had a baby, if you don't know. I have a four and a half months old. So yeah, it's pretty busy around here. And I meant this podcast to go out last week, but I'd gotten behind. But I say all that to say this is about preparing ahead for the holiday season. And at the time that this is going to go live, we have a few weeks until Black Friday and a lot of the different holiday promo that's coming up. So I do still encourage you to plan ahead as best you can. 

But let's keep it real. Life happens. Things happen. Things don't go as planned. You might have a whole strategy, and it just might not work. And that's okay. It doesn't mean that you don't have a strategy because you want to set yourself up to win as best you can. But you also have to give yourself grace for when it just doesn't work out the way you thought it would. And that's where we are. 

Anyway, we're gonna be talking about how to plan ahead for the busy holiday season. And I want to put an emphasis on busy. Y'all, the end of the year is crazy. Like it's already like late October right now when I'm recording this podcast episode. And I just know the next few months are gonna whiz by. Just a side note, as a personal comment, my sons both have their birthdays, September and October. My husband's birthday is in November. My birthday is in December. Our anniversary is in September. The anniversary of all three of our businesses are in November and December. Yeah, it's lit so we have a lot going on. So I really like to make sure that we plan ahead.

So, three things that I want to emphasize. Number one is planning promos. So you want to think about what promos, promotions, special offers, or exciting new things you might be doing around the holiday season. And I want to stress, it doesn't always have to be a discount. And we've talked a little bit on the podcast about pricing and things like that. You want to make sure that you're not always giving discounts because you'll have people who look for discounts. And I'll be honest, I'm going to share a little bit about a promo we have. And we actually had someone reach out one year and they were like, Are y'all gonna do that promo again for Black Friday? I was like, oh, yeah. 

So if you do too many discounts, people will expect them. And so you want to be careful about how that works. And of course, that looks different with different businesses, you know, service-based versus product-based. But you just want to be careful and not always give out discounts because people are going to just wait for the discounts to buy from you. 

But you want to think about those promos might be. Again, it doesn't have to be a discount. It could be just something special you're doing for the holiday season to bring more awareness to your brand and your business. 

One thing I want you to think about when you're planning out your promos is to think about branding. Infuse your branding in your promo. So I'll just give you a quick example of that. My gym business, The League, our color is orange. And so instead of doing Black Friday, we do Orange Friday. And that's just a fun way to again, infuse your branding because remember, you're not just building a business, you're building a brand. And I cannot wait to get into it in the franchise episode. But let me tell you when it comes to growing your business in that way, as a franchise, the branding is so incredibly important, because the franchisees who come under you, that's really what they're paying for. They're wanting to have the power of this brand backing their business. 

So you want to think about how I mean, you might think really having an Orange Friday, instead of Black Friday, does that really change things? It does. It reminds the people who are buying from you that orange is your color. When they see orange, they're gonna think of you. I could go on and on. But you want to make sure when you're thinking about your promos, maybe it's one of the words in your name, the name of your business. Whatever it might be, infuse your branding and whatever promo that you're planning. Okay? 

So the first thing we're going to do is plan our promos. The second thing we're going to do is plan our content. And maybe I should have said this in the beginning, but you're thinking about around Thanksgiving, there's Black Friday or Orange Friday for us. There's also a Small Business Saturday. There's also Cyber Monday. So those are some easy things that you can do in your business to think about how to insert your business there, and how to do it in a unique way, right? Then there's also, obviously, Christmas and the holiday season. So even things like, depending on your business, that there's a certain type of thing that your ideal client really does during this time of the year, you know, infusing your business and your branding there as well. 

Now, when it comes to planning content, y'all, it's busy. Like I said, this time of the year is busy. You don't want to be doing it day-by-day. You want to do it in advance. And look that looks different for different people. I said it before on the podcast, I'll say it again. I don't ever want to tell you exactly what to do, but really how to think, right? So I give advice based on my experience. But guess what? Your experience might be a little bit different. We have different resources, different time, energy, money. So if you have a whole bunch of time, maybe it's not as important to you to plan it way out in advance. Maybe you're like, I really like the feeling of the kind of pressure, right, and being in the moment and being more relevant. Whereas I don't want to plan out my content six weeks in advance, it feels awkward for me. And there might be someone else who doesn't have the time, or who doesn't really want to feel that pressure, and they're going to say, okay, I'm going to plan my content out way in advance so that I can block time to do exactly that. 

So again, figure out what works best for you, but in some kind of way, plan your content. Say okay, you know, the week of Thanksgiving, what am I what is my ideal client doing? You know, for me, my family, I have three kids. On the Friday after Thanksgiving it's a tradition that we've had before we have ever had kids, when we first got married, we've done it for many years, we go and cut down our own Christmas tree. We're literally going to a Christmas tree farm and sawing the tree down, getting it to the car, and all of that. It's so much fun, especially with the kids. So I'm just using that as an example, cause I want you to think about who your ideal client is, and what are the kinds of things they're doing during this time so that you can plan the relevant content for it. 

And y'all, I know, we're like, if y'all aren't, I know I am so tired of like the sleazy cheesy marketing stuff, right? And I don't want to be judgmental either because I think that we're all just trying to get our message across. We're all trying to grow our businesses. We're all trying to connect with our ideal client. But make sure you do it in a way that really aligns with your core values, that really is going to attract the kind of person who is going to buy from you, because otherwise you're gonna sound like that sleazy cheesy salesman. 

My point is don't just like think okay my ideal client's doing this. I'm going to just put my brand there and just kind of, you know, put it out there. Instead, be more like sincere and more connected. Okay, I'm not gonna keep going down that path, but you know what I mean. Plan your content and do it in an authentic way. 

So we're going to plan our promos. We're going to plan our content. And we're going to plan rest. Okay, rest is so important. Oh, my goodness. Like I told you, we have a lot going on right now. And I am realizing that I need rest now more than ever. I'm going to give you a little example. It was Christmas Eve of 2019. So I had just launched Bird Williams, my strategy firm. And I had no idea that it was going to take off as fast as it did. I was at the time working one-on-one with clients. And there was so much I had to work on, you know, all these different custom projects. It was really not, what I figured out, really wanted to do. I didn't know then. And I remember it was Christmas Eve of 2019. And I was up. My family was asleep. You know, and I'm up working. And I told myself that I will never do this again. I will never put myself in this situation. So I didn't in that year, because I didn't really know I didn't know was gonna take off the way I did. But I didn't plan for rest. I didn't prioritize that. I didn't say, okay, I'm going to block my calendar in December, you know, the last week or last two weeks in December, or whatever that is. I didn't do that then. 

But guess what? Two years fast forward two years to today, I have done that. If you go and try to book a session with me, a strategy session, it's blocked off the last two weeks of the year, because I need to create that space for my rest and for my family. So it's so important. And, you know, you'll hear so many messages around Q4 and how important it is to you know, meet your goals and really capture the people you want to capture during this time. And guess what, that's all true. Guess what I've actually talked about that. I've talked about that in my podcast on how to prepare for the end of the year, and what you need to kind of do in terms of checking off your list. In some seasons, that's important to do, and in others, it's important to rest. 

And of course, it's not all of one and not the other. Right? There's a mix of it. I said the last two weeks of December, I don't have sessions. I still have sessions the first two weeks. So there's a way to integrate both. But let me tell you, as an entrepreneur, most of the time, we're thinking more about our businesses than we are thinking of ourselves. So this is just a reminder that while you're planning your promos for the holiday season, while you're planning your content, also plan for rest, okay?

But I want again to say like take what works for you and leave what doesn't. What's most important is that you assess the season that you're in, and what you need right now personally, like in your personal life, and also as an entrepreneur in your business. Assess it. Take a second. You know what I am actually this is, I wasn't even planning on saying this, but I just I was in the shower. I know, I've talked before about shower sessions, not to be TMI, but how me I'll be in the shower, I'll just start getting ideas, so many great ideas. And I think it's because it's the one time in my day, that I can't be doing anything else. I'm only showering. I can't be listening to a podcast, or reading, I can kind of listen to music, but can't really hear it. You know what I'm saying? So it's like, okay, this is just, my brain is open and able to receive, and I have so many ideas. 

One of the ideas I had was to just write out all my priorities in life. And what I'm sensing is that I don't really work in the areas that I want to work most in. So in what I say our priorities to me, if I look at my calendar, I don't think it reflects that. So what I'm going to do is literally, for personal and business, and write out all my priorities. So I have like all my different businesses, church, my kids, and in terms of my personal life. And I'm going to see like, what do I want to really prioritize? And then I look at my calendar and say, okay, what is true, and what isn't, and how do I need to make adjustments. 

So I hope you do the same thing for yourself. And maybe this is a season or you need to get off your butt, and you need to get to work and launch that website and tell the people about your business and get that marketing strategy together and hire that person so that you're not, you know, beating yourself up and doing all these things that you don't really have to do so you can focus more on your core competencies because it's really fear that's holding you back. Not really anything else.

Okay, I'm gonna get off my soapbox. But my point is, for some of us, we need to get up and do things and make things happen and not wait for 2022 to say okay, once January starts I'm gonna do it. Some of us need to actually get up and start doing some things. 

Others of us need to slow down, need to rest, need to really accept that like I don't think I'm okay right now and it's okay to pause. Need to really accept that nagging pain I've had in my side or that weird thing that I feel in my shoulder, I probably should go to the doctor for that. I need to make a doctor's appointment. Let's prioritize ourselves. 

So again, assess the season you're in and decide what best next steps you need to take and just know that I'll be cheering you on. Just know that the future of your business will be better for you to be honest with yourself about where you are and what you need right now. Okay? 

That was great. I hope you enjoyed this episode. I know it was kind of all over the place, but I do hope that it was helpful to you. And I want to remind you about the year-end business checklist. Like I said, it's on birdwilliams.com/resources, along with all the other many free downloads. Or you can think kind of more strategically about what you need to check off before the end of the year and also make sure that you plan for the busy holiday season okay awesome 

As always, thank you so much for tuning into Bird Means Business podcast. Make sure that you subscribe on Apple Podcasts, and follow us on Spotify, okay? Be sure to tell every entrepreneur you know about this episode so that they can plan ahead for the busy holiday season too. 

Talk to y'all next week.