“Great! What can you do now, to make sure that happens?” I asked. They immediately made a list of people to call before Christmas to set up meetings in January and blocked out time for business development.

The New Year Lag in NZ Businesses

We see this repeated in NZ businesses of all sizes, particularly services and manufacturing. If you have a Christmas closedown like most NZ businesses, it’s about mid-January before you get sales and marketing underway. Services and production don’t get up until full speed until February. It’s financial tough from January (holiday leave, provisional tax, GST), through February (lower sales in January) until mid-March. That’s a long time to keep your belts tightened!

Set Up Strong Habits Now

This is a good time to introduce good new habits. Start small because it’s easier to start and not procrastinate if it’s not challenging. James Clear describes the 2-Minute Rule in his book Atomic Habits, which states “When you start a new habit, it should take less than two minutes to do.”[i] For instance, if your goal is to walk regularly for fitness, your Day One goal may be to put one your shoes and walk to the letterbox.

Don’t wait to make a New Year’s resolution, start now. If you want to start journalling, buy a nice journal and pen while you are Christmas shopping. Find a meditation app that lets you mediate for 1-2 minutes. Read one page of a book. If you consistently read one page every day, you will have read 365 pages in one year.

Consistently repeating this habit, even in a small way, makes the process easier to fit into your daily rhythm. Then as it becomes more automatic, you can extend the time and increase your effort. I recently started walking in the morning before breakfast. This morning I surprised myself because my usual route took 5 minutes less than last week and I recovered faster from my brisk walk.

Strong Habits for You in Your Business

While you are at it, remember to set up strong habits for you in your business. Take two minutes to block out time for working on your business. The clients I mentioned at the start blocked out one consultation session for making phone calls to their business networks.

You may not be able to work out a full strategy for your business in two minutes, but you might be able to imagine a future state for your business in one session and take one step in the right direction in another session.

Keeping Up the Momentum

Thanks to automation, you can keep marketing while you are on holiday. You can batch create a month’s worth of social media posts, repurposing content from throughout the year. Don’t tell yourself its repetitive. You are being consistent. If a person isn’t interested right now, they will keep scrolling. But there’s a good chance that someone is going to discover you for the first time, or has seen you before but now has the time to reach out and sign up to your email sequence.

Set up your welcome email to sound enthusiastic, tell a bit about how you work and manage expectations about contact during your summer break. Make sure your out of office message reflects that upbeat style too.

Have work orders lined up for your first two weeks back. If some of your production team is taking extended leave, make sure that you either have cover, or match the jobs to suit that team you have available.

Stronger Teams

Welcome your team back for the New Year, with sincerity and enthusiasm. Encourage strong teams from the start, with excellent communication between each other, respect for each other’s strengths and work styles, transparency in decision-making and accountability. Re-iterate the shared purpose of the business, mission and values.

Foster a collaborative culture, ask the team for input or opinions, and help everyone feel included and a sense of belonging. Work together to improve processes to achieve your shared goals.

Take Care of You, the Business Owner

One of the best things that you can do for yourself is to have a restful break from the business during your close down period. Let your business calls go to voice mail, turn off notifications and only clear your emails at set periods during the day or week. Fill up your emotional cup by spending time with friends or family who you lift you up. Spend time doing activities you enjoy, whether you are an active or passive relaxer. Get outdoors and explore or do something creative. Start your self-care habits.

Start the New Year strongly, by bringing the best version of You back to your business.

-         Serena Irving

Serena Irving is a director in JDW Chartered Accountants Limited, Ellerslie, Auckland and is also a volunteer business mentor with Business Mentors NZ. JDW is a professional team of qualified accountants, auditors, business consultants, tax advisors, trust and business valuation specialists.

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An article like this, which is general in nature, is no substitute for specific accounting and tax advice. If you want more information about the issues in this article, please contact the author.

  [i] https://jamesclear.com/how-to-stop-procrastinating