Putting the Holiday Slump to Work for Your Business
For most freelancers, the holiday season can be a little slow. With so much happening in our personal lives, many freelancers welcome a little break from work.
Except for me. (But being a FSw regular, I know there are others…)
Being a workaholic, I like to celebrate my holidays and jump right back into work. I find that it takes most of my clients a little longer to start bringing me some bacon. What’s a girl—or any freelancer—to do? Work on your business itself, of course.
Every year when things die down a little, I focus my efforts on revving up my marketing and overall organization for the year. I also take the time to do those nagging tasks that never seem to get done. While sitting on the couch and catching up on all the fall shows I missed seems more appetizing, you’ll probably be better off devoting some time to your business. After all, it seems that we often want to do this when we’re too busy to. Why not now?
Here are a few things I do to get grounded during my slow times, so I’m prepared when the storms come a’raging again:
Review my print marketing materials. Is the content and design of my brochure and business card really working for me? Do I need a new one? Being that I moved this year and didn’t get around to changing my address on all of my print materials, I expect to devote plenty of time to updating everything. Another thing I’d like to do is utilize my brochure a little more. Being that I do mostly everything in baby steps to ensure it gets done at all, this will probably include mailing out about 25 brochures to targeted businesses. After all, it’s great to have marketing materials but putting them to work for you makes them even more valuable.
Assess my website. As my leading marketing tool, I don’t always update my website as much as I want to. Similar to the way I examine my print tools, I review my site for content and design. This year I’ll probably make a few changes and improvements. If you don’t have a blog, you may want to add one to your site. Otherwise, even if you just proofread, it’s good to devote time to your business website.
Establish goals. I usually put on some relaxing music and grab a cup of tea—along with my favorite pen and journal—to write down some goals. First I start jotting down things at the top of my head, and then I narrow my list down to about five goals for the year. This brainstorming session is vital to help me figure out where I’m going. Even if you’re satisfied with your business as a seasoned freelancer, you may want to spend more time with your hobbies or travel. Newer freelancers may want to break a certain financial figure in sales or obtain a certain number of clients. Wherever you are in your career, setting goals and getting grounded always helps.
Stock up on supplies. Last year, I purchased a notebook, which really helped me organize my thoughts. A chronic list-maker, I found that I needed different notebooks to jot down ideas, business-related notes, goals, and information on prospective clients. One type really helped—I used one side to track overall to-do’s that were slipping through (dentist appointments and other annoyances that had to be done) and the other side to list out prospective clients. I found that too many names were getting away from me and I could refer to one place when I wanted to try to secure prospects with my direct mail campaign. Each time a client called or emailed, I knew to grab the notebook and jot down a client’s information. Think about what other supplies you may need for your office and take an afternoon trip to pick things up. Stock up on things like ink and paper, just to name a few.
Organize electronically. Here’s where I can really use some help. I have an Outlook Address Book that is a wreck. It’s filled with old contacts, half-filled in information and other missing details. Worst of all, I’m sure it needs to be backed up. However you organize your electronic data, make sure you coordinate it and take the time to back it up. Now’s as good a time as ever. Unless you’re into fancy systems that do things automatically, taking time to manually organize things while you have it is a must-do.
Prepare for tax time. Depending on when your tax time is—mine’s in April—I use this time to clean out my physical files, make sure all my receipts are organized, and start working on my year-end financials. I compile all of the “extras” that I always forget to deduct, too, like online invoices. Of course you should have an accountant to do all the numbers for you, but it’s also nice to have everything separated into folders or clipped together so you can simply hand over your mass of sorted papers and receipts. This makes it easier on the accountant, which may save you money, too.
As freelancers, it’s hard to deal with the slower times. But when you utilize the time to properly organize and prepare yourself, you can accomplish a whole lot just in time for things to get super busy again.
Another smart tip is to learn from other freelancers. With that said, what do you do to organize and prepare yourself during the holiday slump?
3,200 freelancers surveyed globally. In-depth interviews with 10 notable freelancers.
Insights and information you can't afford to ignore!
Find Out More
With over 100 weekly comic strips and counting, Freelance Freedom is an institution around here. Check out of all NC's brilliant work in the archives.
Freelance Freedom Archives
This is nice, but I will still work on Christmas before my clients request another bacon for me and of course I will study some web programming languages… while my clients are on break I will take the rest spending on my website or clients website review some errors etc. Thanks for this info, helps me a lot…
Great article, i now have lots to do over the holiday season!
I completely agree and can relate to this post. Usually Christmas and New Year show a slowdown in work requests and client demand, naturally. I still work right up until the 25th of December, take the day off, and then continue on boxing day as normal (that’s if I can manage to pull myself to the desk after eating so much the day before).
It’s a great time to fine tune your website, plan new changes to services and really fully prepare for the year ahead like you say Kristen.
Top quality
Nice Article as always!
Im trying to do exactly this. Focus on getting my website up to scratch etc, but Im still really snowed under with jobs, so im finding it tough.
.
I got the same issue. Lots of client work. But I have to redo my website.
Taxes is a big mess. I’m living in South America and I’m from the states. Its my first year freelancing full-time. So, come April you’ll see me cry.
Oh Sean I sympathize! Start doing quarterly next year–it should be a little easier for you!
These are great tasks for closing out the year and getting ready for the new one! A few of these are already on my own to do list. Thanks for this timely and useful reminder of how we can stay busy during the slow season!
-Melissa Donovan
Writing Forward
Years ago I would simply shut down my business for the month of December, concentrate on “life” for a while and get my business ready for the new year – there simply wasn’t much work to be had. For the past five or six years December has regularly been one of my busiest work months as corporate clients (on a calendar fiscal year) attempt to exhaust their budgets. I’m currently having clients write me advance checks out of their 2007 budgets for projects to be done in the first quarter of 2008.
- J.
Since I’m a workaholic like you, I have to force myself to take time off, recharge my batteries and DO NOTHING. No computer, no email, limited cell calls. I cannot tell you how much this chunk of time off helps creativity and motivation. I usually take the first week or two of January off. For some reason, this works out best. I begin letting clients know my vacation plans in October, which usually results in clients getting all of their work in right up until the holidays, so I have plenty of projects through the slow time.
Another thing I do is begin pitching Holiday materials (cards, promos, etc) to my clients in August. Most clients don’t think about this stuff until November, which is often too late to do anything beyond quick and dirty (read: less lucrative jobs), so a friendly early reminder is always well received by them, and more profitable to me.
Great post, Kristen. I think we can all relate to the times when everything needs to be organized, in order to start off the new year with a certain amount of relief regarding paperwork, tax information, etc…
I’d just like to let you all know that there’s a website I work for called http://www.shoeboxed.com, where you can organize all of your online and physical receipts for free! You can keep everything in one place and organized any way you want, track your spending with a stats page, and even show off your stuff to other Shoeboxed.com users, in the more social shopping aspect of the site. Receipt organization can be a huge hassle. With Shoeboxed.com, you can get rid of that pain. It’s easy, fast, and even fun! Check it out today and sign up for free: http://www.shoeboxed.com
Another thing I will be doing is to catch up on all my reading I’ve put off the past 12 months. Nothing like a quiet day by the fireplace to read a new book (or the 18 I have waiting on my bookshelf).
Eric
Ah yes downtime, what is that exactly lol? Its like big foot to me, you’ve heard the legend, you’ve seen the ‘footage’ but not sure if it really exists. I am such a workaholic that when I do have down time i don’t know how to handle it, i actually make myself paranoid thinking that I am missing something or forgetting something.
I will def be forcing myself to take mon/tues/wed off for the holiday (hell probably the whole weekend) which means atleast one day of not going on this device and watching all the movies i have collecting dust.
Its a great time though to work on personal projects, I am trying to launch a prime competitor to designfloat, hopefully within the next month. http://www.dailycoder.net
I actually purposely slow down my business during the month of December to make time for holiday festivities, getting out my holiday cards (my only yearly direct mail piece), and prepping for the following year. The last couple of weeks have been interesting with a couple of projects I’m moving forward on and touching base with the folks I met at the various holiday networking events (one of the things that makes December so busy for me) and other potential clients, but generally, I:
1. organize my office, files, etc.
2. put together my marketing plan and goals for the following year.
3. assess my systems, including the marketing/positioning, etc. I’ve been doing, and see if there’s anything that needs tweaking or revamping.
4. Finish up projects that need buttoning up before the new year.
5. Relax a bit and make holiday cookies.
Its funny but this Holiday season was my best season yet. A ton of clients came out the woodwork and I havent stopped working. I have work all thru January as well. You would think I was selling XBoxes haha.
I agree with LayerHater – this month I thought was going to be uber slow but I was able to pick up more jobs this month then in a while, go figure.
Hello!
I want to present unique medicine against a HIV Details can learn here
Be convinced of it!
Excellent stuff from you,I adore what you have got right here. You make it entertaining and you still manage to keep it smart. This is truly a great blog thanks for sharing…