Tips for Running Your Business During the Holidays

Holiday Tips

Receive tips for running your business during the holidays and other important information by checking out today’s Small Business Trends roundup. Got some suggestions to add to any of the information you see? Why not leave them in the comment section below?

The wheels of progress stop for no one. And that includes your clients and customers, who look for 24/7 consistency no matter how many holiday obligations or gatherings you may have scheduled. So how do you, as an entrepreneur, face the season’s hectic workload with aplomb? Here are a few tips on how to manage your holiday workload. Youngentrepreneur

Plan to be away, or de-stress with a working holiday. As an entrepreneur, it’s hard to scale back completely at this time of year—you usually can’t just walk away (and you usually don’t want to). But you can set plans in motion to minimize the footprint of business buzz during this time of year, while still maintaining a state of receptiveness. Or, maybe now is the optimal time to catch up on e-mail, re-evaluate back-burner projects, or use the atmosphere as an inspiration for creative thinking. BizCompare

Marketing

Start making sense! You’ve collected a lot of data on your business, but now it’s time to make sense of it all. You need to transform it into meaningful information you can use as a GPS to see where your business stands, right here and now. But how is this achieved? Here’s a great strategy along with some recommendations for choosing the right analytics tools. CanuckSEO

Be contrary to popular thought. Sometimes it’s better to jump off the bandwagon and head in the opposite direction when it comes to defining your product or service. Jason Gregory offers this brief but poignant insight to illustrate that divergence can be a beautiful thing in business. Small Business Bonfire

Self-development

Don’t get caught inside the box. Teams can sometimes get trapped into predictable patterns of thought and behavior, impeding the group’s effectiveness for problem solving and innovation. But sometimes all that’s needed is a change of scenery to liberate thinking and let the ideas soar. YourOfficeAnywhere

Yoga for entrepreneurs. Really, it’s not that strange, since meditation, analysis, positive thinking, and visualization are all necessary components of the entrepreneurial journey. Take a deep breath and join us in this post for a moment of reflection on your small business goals. Small Business Bliss

Management

What makes a spectacular e-commerce startup? Find out what differentiating characteristics one venture capitalist looks for when deciding whether to fund new e-commerce ventures, and see whether your small business is leveraging these “four pillars of success” to cut through the clutter of the competition. Inc.com

Visual creatures, we humans. First impressions are often the result of what we see. Since the internet is first and foremost a visual medium, it’s doubly important that you incorporate great design elements into your small business Website. But no matter what you’re doing now, here are a few examples of what not to do. Smallbiz Technology

Startups

The death of the franchise? Most likely not, however recent statistics show franchise growth is below projected numbers. But why? These projections are based on many factors, including some as discrete as the lifestyles of the American people, the rate of the economic recovery, and the emerging paradigm of living smaller and smarter. See what the latest surveys and stats are saying on the subject. The Wall Street Journal

One Simple Idea. It’s the title of the book by Stephen Key, but it’s also what you need to focus on when designing your new product. Meet the author of One Simple Idea and learn how you can capitalize on your creativity, even in a competitive market, licensing your ideas to companies with the resources to turn them into real products. Sales Tip A Day