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Do this in December

Welcome my darling Pretties to our Beyond to the Dawn of Business podcast for pretty empowered female entrepreneurs.

It’s time to step into your power Pretties! Lift each other, support the squad and choose a life filled with the autonomy and freedom to live your dreams.

I’m your host Dawn Beth, the Owner and Founder of Beyond the Dawn digital business brand and agency. My coffee is hot and my eyelashes are on, so we are ready to go!

 

I want all female entrepreneurs to feel empowered, supported and loved, and given the opportunity to really connect with other female powerhouses in the industry, in a way in which we lift each other up and inspire each other, and take care of each other in ways that we have previously not seen in business, possibly, listen to us waffling on about business and life our families, and our mindset, our financial goals and our freedoms and our autonomy. And what we hope for the world and what we hope for you, what we hope for ourselves, and all of the things that we’ve experienced through this very colorful journey of becoming successful female entrepreneurs and digital business owners.

If you want to know more you want to learn more, you want to be in a connected network of soulful heart centered female entrepreneurs to help guide and support you in your journey, and sometimes you still understand what it is that you’re going through whilst you’re building your empire, then you are in the right place. To listen to this podcast visit our channel on Apple or Spotify and remember to subscribe for future release updates!

Hi and welcome to this episode. I am delighted today to be talking to you about winter business hibernation.  At this time of year, and we are rapidly moving towards the holidays, at this time of year, so many of my clients are coming to me and feeling lethargic and feeling burnt out, and feeling like actually they just want to slow down to get through the holidays and to enjoy some family time and to do whatever they want to do with that time without thinking about their business.

 

So I wanted to give you some insights into what we do at Beyond the Dawn HQ during December, because I think it’s important and I think it’s really, really good for you to be able to give yourself some time to get on the right foot when it comes to the New Year. One of the beautiful things about this time of year is people are already starting to reflect, it’s a couple of weeks away from the New Year situation, but people are already beginning to reflect on what has worked last year, and what they want things to be like for next year. And this could be a whole myriad of different things like you could be thinking about your financial goals, you could be thinking about your balance goals in terms of how much you worked or how much you didn’t get chance to work or who you want to work with and who you want to support you in the next part of your journey.

 

But I think it’s really important that whatever you do you recognise that so many of us have gotten used to the seasonal culture of the year that we actually are totally affected by seasons. And there are different ways to look at the seasons, like as a woman, we can look at our own menstrual cycle as a season, I know that I look at all of the different things in terms of like, where I am in my cycle, when I decide what it is I’m going to do with my time. If it’s the week before my period, you do not see me singing and dancing all over on live videos and things like that because I tend to be in my pyjamas with a blanket around me feeling sorry for myself, you know, feeling a certain way. And that’s not to say that anybody should accept that that is the way you should feel because I know there are things that can be done to make to make you feel better and I’m always working on that. But if you know yourself what your cycle is like, and you can honour your own energy in that way, then that’s obviously the first thing you need to consider.

 

Then we can talk about the seasonal elements of our culture. So we know that the winter state, the cold and dark nights, the very short days, all of those things, they have a massive, massive influence on the way we feel and how much energy we have. I know people and I just recently had an amazing interview with a friend of mine, Maggie. And I know people like Maggie who just are full of zest, who were just energetic and just full of magnetism and it’s beautiful. It’s absolutely beautiful. Those people don’t get that way by allowing themselves to be changed by what season it is or what the weather is doing outside. That is an internal shift that they work on. And in the same way that we talk about how your summer body is created the winter before you really need to be deciding right now in this kind of sleepy, hibernating state, whether you’re going to hibernate or whether you’re going to get yourself on the right foot for next year.

 

And there are some key things that we do in December that even if we let other things kind of lax a little bit to make sure that we do have that great balance and we do get a break and we do have the opportunity to enjoy the season. We don’t actually hibernate, like fully hibernate and sleep because this is something that obviously can have a really detrimental effect to where you get to next year in terms of being able to have that spring in your step ready for spring when the whole world tends to get a bit more open and energetic. I also know that our situation at the moment with a global pandemic is having a massive difference on how people feel. We’ve gone from being all go, all open, access now to being on lockdown and having to renew the way we feel about our movement, you know, being able to understand and reestablish the relationship with what we do in terms of how often we leave the house and how often we see other people and things that priorly, we would never have felt the need to do, because we are social beings and we do need to be amongst other people in order to have that really great well being. 

 

That being said, there is something to be said about looking at the seasons and recognising what happens in terms of your ideal client, your niche, and culture as a full, whole spectrum. So, lots of people might be looking at this winter state, looking at the holidays, and they’ll be – you can have these two fold ideas in terms of that. So we might have some people who are looking at it and are looking forward to getting back to being at home or getting back to being able to come away and take some space and take a break and just you know have that great mindset space, you might have other people who are raring to be social to be with the people that they care about, because a lot of people did not get to do that last Christmas, in the last holidays. So it’s so important for, for us to think about those different things.

 

But in general, there are some certainties that we can kind of rely on. Okay, we know that in January, there’s going to be if you’re in the online, entrepreneurial digital space, there’s going to be 101 launches in January, a whole new you new learning new year, let’s get you on top is going to happen in January, I suggest that if you are the type of person that wants to do something like that, you sign up to something now, have a look at what’s available if you’re looking for that support don’t wait till January. Our mentorship, which is very much part and parcel of that was created and started on the 20th of November and that was intentional, so that our people will go into 2022 with a far clearer perspective, they will know exactly what it is that we’re all working on together. And we will hit the ground running. So if you’re already feeling that way, and you’re thinking, oh, I think I’d like to join something in January. Don’t wait till January do it now look for something now, don’t wait for the for the January rush. You want to be getting those foundations in early.

 

In terms of seasons and things you do want to hit January running, you want to make sure you’ve got things going and like any holiday, think about it, when you have your summer holidays, if you give yourself some time off in summer, you’re going to have the two weeks before you go off or maybe even longer than that. And the two weeks after you come back, they are transitional periods, you are trying to make sure that everything is covered for the time that you’re away. And even if you have team which I’m so grateful for my team to be it for me to be able to do that. But even if you have a team, you have to prep the team, you have to make sure that the team are aware of what is needed, you have to make sure that everything that is there and accessible to them in terms of information or systems or anything like that. And then when you come back, it’s the same thing like there are going to be there are going to be things in your business that only you do and whilst they’re on hold, you’re very likely come back to a pile of work. And that might be emails, it might be people trying to contact you, it might be people who want to work with you and you’ve not had any discovery calls because you’ve been away and the same thing will happen over any break.

 

So what are the things that you need to have in place? What are the things that you can automate? And what are the things that are really important for you to be able to get into January and get everything up and running and on legs quicker than everything else? So the one thing that we definitely always do and we do not neglect in December is of course our social media scheduling. We make sure that we are speaking to our people, we are wishing them well. We are connecting with them the entire time even if we’re on the couch in our PJs with a blanket and a cat eating mince pies and watching the Muppets Christmas Carol. There will be our social media will be going out as usual. We’ll be connecting to our people we’ll be giving people the support, we’ll be making sure that nobody is left behind, that we’re wishing people well and that we’re keeping the conversation going. That’s a non negotiable.

 

Also throughout December we are planning and we’re not just planning the first quarter we are planning the entire year. I find it much easier to reverse engineer our planning schedule and if you’re in our pro members, then you will have enjoyed our amazing planning session together. I love doing that every single year it’s just so special. And this is the kind of thing that we’ll do, we’ll spend an entire day and actually me and my business operations manager Stef, we spend an entire day and we’re going to go through everything, we’re going to know exactly what is happening, what we’re launching, what is going out, what needs to be done, where we need to, allocate tasks to the team in terms to get us where we need to be, and exactly what the schedule is going to be like. Even down to how many free sessions I have to sell one to ones or how many days I have to offer for VIP, we’ll go through everything. 

 

We also forecast our finances, we will take a look at what we’ve got coming in, what we’ve got recurring coming in. And we’ll have a look at what we estimate and forecast in terms of our audience size and our launches and what we’re going to do in terms of our courses and things like that. And we’ll have a rough estimation of what it is that we will earn next year, which is fantastic. Because that gives us a full view of what resources we have available to be able to reinvest in our business to reinvest in our people. And to keep treating our Pretties, our audience, the best out there, to make sure that we are continually giving them absolutely everything we can to support them, which is the bit you can probably tell with the change of my voice, I can hear it myself, it’s exciting, like it fills me with absolute joy. So, you know, we look at the finances and we forecast that.

 

The other thing that we do in December is we fully commit to figuring out frameworks and workflows that will support us in our agency. We want our clients to receive an amazing service that they love. And I know that we already have that, which is great, but we’re always looking to improve, we’re always looking to keep ahead, we’re always looking for what extra additional value we can give, how we can support further and what it is we can do next. So it’s super, super important to us that we do that.

 

And the other thing that we do through December is we get a really, really, really clear idea of exactly clarity wise what it is that we are doing throughout the first two quarters. So we will have our full kind of annual plan, we’ll know what weeks I’m taking off on holiday, for instance, like that will be preordained, we will go through the entire year. And we will block that out it’ll be obvious when we’re available, when we’re not available and who we’re focusing on, you know, there’ll be certain days that are just dedicated to certain clients, depending on what level of support they have with us at the moment. And it just gives everything a really, really clear, clear understanding of what we’re doing next year.

 

The other thing that we’ll look at is we’ll look at my training schedule, because one of the things that I’m dedicated in is that I’m always learning myself, I want to be able to pass this fantastic knowledge on to as many people as possible, I know that a lot of my Pretties do not have the capital, they don’t have the finance at the moment to be able to invest in themselves at a level that could really support them. So we go and do it, we go and spend that money,  we take me through training, I’m a lifetime learner, I’m a lifelong learner. So it’s no problem for me to go and do that. In fact, it’s a massive, massive source of my joy. I go and I learn and I invest and then I’m able to pass that on. So we’ll also look at who my support systems are, who will be my coach for 2022, who’s you know, whose programmes am I going to join? What is it that my people truly need? And what do we need to learn for me to be able to support them further. And, you know, 2021 has been a massive, massive transitional period in terms of our expertise. And that blows my mind how we just keep elevating to this level, I’m so grateful. It’s a beautiful thing to be a part of and we’ll look at that, and we’ll look at how much we’ve come on in a year, and we’ll review everything.  We will drop things that don’t serve us, and we will make sure that we have a really positive outlook and a really enjoyable outlook as well because we like to have fun in terms of everything that we put in place for 2022.

 

Another thing that we love to do is we love to do some practical things because we use it as an opportunity to clean house and we’re already starting that right now. It’s already begun in BTD. We we’ve already begun to do that kind of thing. So we will go through and we will be clearing email boxes, we will be dumping things that we do not need to keep hold of anymore. We’ll be going right through all of our online server systems that hold any kind of storage and we’ll be removing things that we do not need, things that have already been used or things that have passed their date in terms of what we need to hold. We will be going through our email list in terms of our Active Campaign lists and things like that, we will be removing people who aren’t opening our emails, we’ll be removing people who obviously have unsubscribed from things, we’ll just be really cleaning house. But we also have a look at our subscriptions, we have a look at our support systems like what systems we use online. And again, we will make decisions based on how we can refine and how we can explore and make sure we have everything that we need to to be able to move forward into a really positive 2022.

 

The one thing we won’t do is we will not hibernate, we will not use this as an excuse to have six or eight weeks off and then come back mid January, when everybody else is already halfway around the playing field wondering why we’re late to the party.  That is not something that we will allow and the one thing that I would ask you to consider in your steps right now is are you being intentional, being intentional is everything when it comes to this time of year. If you’re having a day off, great, I love that go and do a fantastic day of Christmas shopping or sit on your sofa with a fire blazing with a hot chocolate whilst watching crummy Channel Five Christmas films – guilty pleasure do what you need to do but make sure that it is intended. Don’t do it by accident, don’t fall into the accidental gravital pull that comes from this time of year. You know, the weather might be shocking outside the window. But please don’t make that an excuse for you not to be moving in some way, do what you need to do to fill your joy and heartspace but do it with the knowledge that you have everything else sorted out.

 

Now one of the things that I find is really, really rife with my clients around this time of year is overwhelm procrastination, because there’s so much to do. There’s so much to do in your personal life, there’s so many things to consider, whether it’s worrying about whether you’ll get that perfect cranberry sauce from Marks and Spencers that everybody loves, or whether your niece is going to enjoy her Christmas present this year.  It might be trying to finance the entire holiday, it might be trying to navigate between the fact that you still have a tonne of stuff that you want to do for your business, it could be 101 different things. And this is where I just want to remind you before we go today that the only way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time. Give yourself the space to complete one job okay? And feel good about it every single time you complete a job and just slowly but surely, tick all the bits off your list. Remember that the first thing, the first thing that leads to failure is overfilling a list and not giving yourself anywhere near the amount of time that you need to create a successful tick on that list. You can’t write down on the list, make a phone call for two minutes to one person and wrap 100 presents and expect them to have the same level of list capacity, because one takes hours and hours of your time. And the other one is a two minute phone call. So you need to be realistic with what you are giving yourself in terms of tasks and not overbear yourself with those tasks because that’s immediate failure. What you’re looking for is quick wins and you need to recognise again the intention, you need to recognise or when you successfully complete one.

 

I know that this time of year can be stressful. So I’m sending you a big hug and send you a lot of love. I’m sure, sure everybody is going to be absolutely delighted with the way that the month ends out. But don’t let it be the excuse for you to be paralysed. Don’t let it be the excuse for you to stop. You can slow down and you can relax but do it intentionally. And make sure you’ve crossed your T’s and dotted your I’s before you do because when January comes round and everything starts to open up again, you’re going to feel really good about the fact that you are not scrabbling around trying to get things going because you’ve already put yourself on the right footing. Alright Pretties I will speak to you soon.

 

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I hope you enjoyed today’s podcast as much as I enjoyed recording it! Make sure to subscribe on your favourite podcast provider for future release updates

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