Take full advantage of your down time.

The holidays can be a challenging time of year for small business. Especially for small business providing services. It can get pretty slow.

Two times in the year, that happens with my business. It happens every year and is just the natural cycle of customer behavior that causes it. Do I try to change the behaviors of others and spend dollars trying to do so, or do I take advantage of that time to accomplish things I cannot do when so busy?

I choose to take advantage of the time. I am in advertising and I believe in the theory of "feeding the fire," as apposed to trying to change behaviors. Which can cost lots of ad dollars. When you feed the fire, you advertise while people are in the buying mood. An example would be if you have a shoe store. Christmas, back to school and Easter are the big seasons for that industry. So you spend the majority of your budget during those times, spending much less in the off seasons. Still advertising, but not as robustly as you would when people are buying.

If you were to spend most of your ad dollars during the seasons when people are not buying shoes to try to change their behavior, you will waste a lot of money, resulting in lower sales.

So, I take this time to do the things I don't have time to do on a regular basis. Organize, clean, plan, etc. I set my advertising budget and plan for the next year. I make sure my customer files and information is updated. I organize my store and office, and go through my computer and clean it out. It's all just regular administration stuff, but it all needs to be done and it all helps to make the business grow, healthier.

So take advantage of your off time. Get your business in order and enjoy the season.