📍Some business owners are about to lose two months of productivity, and they've already started making excuses for it. Thanksgiving is coming, Christmas is around the corner, employees are requesting time off, customers are changing their schedules, and suddenly everything that was important in September becomes something that we'll just deal with in January.

And I guess I just wanna know why. Why do we work so hard for 10 months of the year only to start mentally closing our businesses before the year's actually over? Now, don't misunderstand me, I love the holidays. Like, I literally crave them all year long.  My ringtone, in fact, on my phone is the soundtrack to Home Alone.

I probably watch the Home Alone series no less than 50 times. I absolutely love it, and I mean 50 times every season. It's my favorite I love spending time with family, celebrating, and giving people the opportunity to enjoy the things that they've worked hard for all year. But there's a difference between preparing your business for the holidays and allowing your business to become unproductive because the holidays are coming, and I think that some of us do need to hear that today.

Welcome back to No Silver Spoons. I'm Sarah Beth Herman, and if you're new here, I currently own seven companies. I've established businesses with employees, leadership teams, clients, and ongoing operational responsibilities. And I also have a company that's only about eight weeks old, where I'm actively building a brand, managing inventory, watching expenses, and figuring out how to grow it responsibly.

So right now, I'm looking at the holidays from several very different business perspectives. For my established businesses and companies, I'm thinking about payroll, staffing coverage, customer service, cash flow, and what needs to be completed before December 31st. For my new business, I'm thinking about holiday shopping, inventory, packaging,

fulfillment, shipping deadlines, and whether the products that I'm selling are actually profitable, and I'm having to do all of that at the same time. That is entrepreneurship. You don't get to put one business on hold because another one needs attention, and you certainly can't assume the calendar is going to manage your responsibilities for you.

So today, I wanna talk about what business owners should be doing right now to prepare for that final week of 2026, and I have some statistics that I think might surprise you, but first, I want to check in on something. Let's talk about last week. In episode 146, I challenged you to identify three decisions you've been avoiding: one financial decision, one operational decision, and one leadership decision.

I asked you to put a date next to each one and take action. So how did you do? Did you actually write them down? Did you schedule the actual conversation? Did you review the expense? Did you finally address the problem that you've been talking about for the last six months? Or did you listen to the episode, agree with everything I said, and go right back to your normal routine?

I'm asking because I really want this podcast to be useful to you. I don't want you collecting advice. I want you applying it. And if you didn't complete last week's assignment, I'm not going to tell you to forget about it and move on. I actually want you to go back and do it, especially right now, because one of the biggest mistakes I see business owners make toward the end of the year is convincing themselves that anything unfinished can simply become a goal for January.

But January isn't a storage unit for everything you didn't wanna handle in November, and the holidays are not an excuse to stop paying attention to your business. The holiday slowdown is real for some businesses, but it's not inevitable. I was looking at some research on workplace productivity during the holiday season, and I found something interesting.

In a 2019 survey from Robert Half Technology, 52% of employees said they expected to shop online while at work or using a company device during the holiday season. And among those respondents, 44% acknowledged that shopping for deals interfered with their productivity. Now, that survey is several years old, and I'm not suggesting those numbers describe every workplace today, but I think the behavior is familiar.

People start thinking about their Christmas shopping, their travel arrangements, family events, school schedules, and everything else happening outside work, and naturally, some of their attention shifts. But here's the interesting part. Another survey published by Accountemps in 2018 found that 65% of professionals actually reported getting more work done during the holidays.

More work. So apparently, the holiday season doesn't affect everyone the same way, and I think that's important to chat about. Some people become distracted, and other people become incredibly focused because they want to finish their responsibilities which tells me that we shouldn't automatically accept that November and December are going to be unproductive.

Instead, we should be asking what we are doing to help our teams stay focused. Are our priorities clear? Do employees know which deadlines matter? Are managers preparing for staffing changes? And are we giving people realistic workloads so they can finish their work and enjoy their time away? Because I don't think the answer is to cancel Christmas vacation or make anybody feel guilty for wanting to spend time with their families.

I think the answer is to prepare properly.  Your employees should be able to enjoy the holidays, and your customers should still be able to count on your business. And those two things can absolutely coexist. First, I want to protect your cash. If there's one thing I want every business owner to review before Thanksgiving, it's their cash position.

Not just revenue, not just how much you sold this month. I want you looking at the actual money available to operate your business. What payroll is coming due? What invoices are outstanding? What annual subscriptions or renewals are approaching? Are you planning bonuses? Do you have holiday-related expenses?

And what happens if a few customers pay later than expected? Because this is where I see business owners get caught off guard. They look at their revenue and they think that they're having a good month, but they haven't accounted for all the money that's about to leave the business. And then December arrives.

They're paying employees, purchasing gifts, paying for celebrations, managing year-end expenses, and suddenly they're wondering why their cash balance looks different from what they expected I want you to review the next eight weeks. Look at what you reasonably expect to collect and what you know you'll need to pay.

And please don't build your entire plan around the assumption that every customer is going to pay exactly on time. If you've been in business long enough, you know better. Give yourself room for delays, and if you discover that cash is going to be tighter than expected, I'd much rather you know that now than find out the week before Christmas.

This is also a good time to review your outstanding receivables. If customers owe you money, make sure your team is following up appropriately and consistently. Don't wait until December twenty-ninth to discover that invoices from October were actually never addressed. Second, your holiday staffing plan needs to be finished before the holidays start.

I want you to think about your employees' schedules. Who has requested time off? Who's going to be available during Thanksgiving week? What does your coverage look like during Christmas and New Year's? And who's responsible if something urgent happens while a manager is unavailable? I think business owners sometimes underestimate how much planning this requires.

You have one employee taking a week off, another has family coming into town, a manager is traveling, and somebody else has been waiting until the last minute to request time off, and it's gonna be urgent. Suddenly, you have an entire department trying to figure out who's going to cover the work.

That shouldn't be happening the day before somebody leaves. I want managers reviewing coverage now, and I want them looking beyond whether enough names appear on the schedule. Do the people who are working actually know how to handle the responsibilities they'll be covering?

Do they have access to the systems they need? Do they know who to contact if there's a problem? And are there deadlines that need to be moved up because the right person won't be available later?  I don't want employees spending their entire holiday worrying about whether their workplace is falling apart without them.

If somebody has approved time off, I want us to respect that, which means we need to plan well enough that the business can operate while they are away. That's good for the company, and it's good for the employee.

Third, I want you to stop confusing holiday sales with holiday profit. This one is especially relevant to me right now because of the new business I'm building. When you're selling physical products, the holiday season can be exciting. You're preparing promotions, ordering inventory, creating bundles, managing packaging, and thinking about how to reach more customers.

And there is a tremendous opportunity. The National Retail Federation's two thousand twenty-six forecast projects approximately one point zero one three trillion in retail sales during November and December, representing a four point two percent increase over two thousand twenty-five.

That is a significant amount of consumer spending. And NRF has also reported in recent years, November and December have accounted for approximately nineteen percent of annual retail sales on average. Now that's retail. Those figures don't mean every industry experiences the same holiday demand, but they do tell us something important.

While some business owners are mentally winding down, other businesses are preparing for a very active selling season. And if you're in retail, e-commerce, hospitality, or any other seasonal business, this may be particularly important for you to pay attention to. But I want to caution you about something.

A busy holiday season doesn't necessarily mean a profitable one. Let's say you sell a product for fifty dollars. You decide to offer a twenty percent holiday discount. Now you're collecting forty dollars, but you still have to pay for the product, packaging, transaction fees, advertising, and potentially shipping.

If your total costs are thirty-two dollars, you have eight dollars left before accounting for other business overhead.  You made the sale, but did you make enough money? That's the question. I see businesses get so excited about the number of orders coming in that they forget to examine what each order is actually contributing.

And if you're running promotions, I want you to know those numbers before the promotion begins. Don't wait until you have 100 orders to discover that you priced the offer incorrectly. I want you growing. I want you selling, but I also want you to make money because revenue is exciting, but profit is what allows you to keep building.

Fourth, your customers shouldn't have to suffer because it's holiday season. Think about the businesses you've interacted with around Thanksgiving or Christmas. You send a message, nobody responds. You call, nobody answers. You need help with an order, an appointment, a service, and suddenly you're waiting days for someone to get back to you.

And what do you hear? "Oh, well, it's the holidays." Now, I understand that people are away. I understand that some businesses have reduced hours. But if you're going to be open and serving customers, you still need a plan for taking care of them.

That doesn't mean promising instant service when you don't have the staffing to provide it. It means being clear about what customers can expect. If shipping is going to take longer, communicate that. If your office is closing for several days, let customers know in advance.

If an important service won't be available, explain how and when it will resume. And if somebody has an unresolved concern, make sure there's an actual person responsible for following up. I think this is especially important for service businesses. Your customer doesn't necessarily know which employee is on vacation.

They know they hired your company. And while reasonable customers can understand holiday schedules, they still deserve accurate communication, and you can prepare for that now. Review outstanding complaints. . Look at unanswered requests. Make sure there aren't customers waiting on information that should have been provided weeks ago.

Because I would much rather enter Thanksgiving knowing that we've handled those responsibilities than spend December apologizing for things that we overlooked. Fifth, I want you to decide what absolutely must be completed before December 31st. And I'm gonna be careful here because I don't want this to become another episode about making decisions.

Last week was about that. Today is about managing the time you have left. I want you to look at your calendar. We have the remainder of October. As of the release of this episode, we've got November and December left, but those aren't all normal working weeks. There are holidays, vacations, school breaks, customers who will be unavailable, employees who will be working different schedules.

So if you're looking at the calendar and you're assuming you have two full months of uninterrupted productivity, you may be overestimating what you can accomplish

I want you to identify the things that genuinely need to be completed this year. It could be a financial review. Maybe it's a customer project with a contractual deadline. Maybe it's inventory preparation. Maybe it's finalizing next year's budget. And maybe it's completing training or getting your team prepared for a January launch.

Whatever those things are, write them down and assign realistic completion dates. Then I want you to look at the rest of the list because some things probably can wait until January, and that's fine. I'm not telling you to cram 12 months of unfinished work into the final weeks of the year. I'm telling you to be intentional about what actually matters.

There's a difference between making a deliberate plan for January and allowing something to slip into January because nobody was paying attention

And if you are responsible for your team or a team, I want them to understand the difference too. I also want you to remember the people who helped you build the business this year. I know I've been pretty direct today, and I think it's necessary, but I don't wanna finish this episode without talking about your employees because year-end planning shouldn't be exclusively about how much work we can get out of people before they leave for Christmas.

I want you to think about the people who showed up for your business this year. The employees who supported customers, the managers who worked through difficult situations, the team members who stepped in when somebody needed help, the people who quietly did their jobs well even though nobody was standing there watching them.

Have you acknowledged them? Have you thanked them? Have you told them what their contribution meant to the company? And I'm not talking about sending a generic message to everybody that says, "Hey guys. Thanks for all your hard work." I'm talking about recognizing specific contributions, especially at the end of the year when people are reflecting on what they've accomplished and what they want from their year ahead.

You can have high expectations and still be deeply appreciative of your employees. In fact, I think you should. The companies I want to build are companies where people understand the standards, they take pride in their work, and they know their contributions matter. And if you are a business owner, I hope you're thinking about that as you prepare for the holidays.

This episode of No Silver Spoons is sponsored by Dentistry Support. Whether you're looking for additional support or you're simply looking to improve the way your office handles eligibility, billing, or phones, please visit dentristysupport.com. Delivering results, simplifying everything Here's a quote I want you to live by this holiday season.

I wanna give you something that is just simple to remember, and it's something I believe applies whenever you're operating one company or, if you're like me, seven. You can slow down to enjoy the season without allowing your business to fall behind. Write that down. You can slow down to enjoy the season without allowing your business to fall behind.

I think some business owners operate as though there are only two choices: either everybody works at full speed throughout the holidays and nobody gets to enjoy themselves, or the company essentially stops functioning until January. I don't believe those are our only options. You can plan ahead. You can give employees meaningful time off and celebrate with your family and enjoy Thanksgiving and Christmas, and you can still manage a business that serves its customers and manages its money responsibly and that finishes the year well.

But you have to prepare. You have to know what matters. You have to be willing to do the work before the holiday season arrives. So your assignment this week: the holiday business readiness check. I'm gonna give you five questions, and I want you to answer them honestly. So go grab a pen and paper, grab your phone, pull up the Notes app.

Here we go. First, do you know how much cash your business expects to have available after holiday payroll and expenses? Second, have you confirmed your holiday staffing schedule and backup coverage? Third, if you're running holiday promotions, do you know exactly what you're actually making after the related costs?

Fourth, do you have a plan for your customers while employees are taking time off? And fifth, have you identified what absolutely needs to be completed before December thirty-first? That's it. Five questions. Pause and rewind if you need to hear them again.

I want you to give yourself one point for every question you can confidently answer yes to. If you score five out of five, wonderful. Keep monitoring the plan as the season progresses. If you score three or four, you have a few things to address, and if you score zero, one, or two, I want you to make this a priority before Thanksgiving because you don't need another motivational speech about finishing the year strong.

You need to know whether your business is actually prepared, and I think this is a much more useful conversation. I want to leave you with something personal. I own multiple businesses. You've heard me say that before. I understand how easy it is to spend the entire year thinking about what needs to happen next.

There's always another goal, another opportunity, responsibility, another problem to solve. And if you're not careful, you can become so focused on running your companies that you forget to enjoy the life that you are working so hard to build. I don't want that for you. I want you to be successful. I want you to grow.

I want you to have a profitable business. I also want you to be able to sit down with your family at Thanksgiving and enjoy yourself without constantly wondering what's happening back at the office. And the way you get there isn't by ignoring your responsibilities until January. It's by preparing now.

Review your money, prepare your staffing, understand your margins, take care of your customers, clients, and patients, and be realistic about what needs to be finished before the year ends. Then give yourself permission to enjoy the season you worked so hard to reach. Because a well-run business shouldn't require you to sacrifice every holiday just to keep it operating.

Next week, we're going to take this conversation into another area I think business owners need to pay attention to before the new year. I want to talk about how you evaluate whether your company actually had a successful year. Not whether revenue went up, not just whether everybody stayed busy, but whether your business became financially stronger, operationally better, more capable of supporting the growth you want next year.

Because I think some of you might be surprised by what the numbers reveal. I'm Sarah Beth Herman, and 📍 this is No Silver Spoons. I'll catch you on the next episode