Holiday Season has started

Well it's that time of year again. Are you ready to deal with the end of the year and the Holiday's? At BusinessDetroit.com we understand that the Holiday's are very stressful both on the business side and personal side of life. Here's a few tips to lowering your stress in your business and personal life right now. First let's visit the business side and talk about what needs to get done and the easiest way to just finish things up, so you can enjoy the Holiday's. Now is the time to sit down with your staff and write up the must do's for your companies year end. These should include improvements, taxes, sales campaigns, customer service issues and of course your new game plan for 2008. This might sound like a lot of work, but actually it should only take your a day or two to get this started. Some improvement ideas should be connected with looking back at how your year went in regards to sales and customer service. What worked and what really didn't...then write up a new way to do business. Now let's move onto the next task taxes....if you use Quickbooks or a similar product then this is a breeze...just print off an account summary of your financials and scan to see how much money you made and loss. This is the time you need to figure out if you want to pay extra taxes or get some more write offs by investing back into your business with new equipment, training or products. Touching base with your client's during the Holiday's is a great way to share with them how you care about their business and how you can help them in 2008. Sending out a Holiday card is the easiest way to maximize your marketing and customer service with a very low cost. We love using a company named Promotice, who does an outstanding job with Holiday cards....you can order online at www.Promotice.com . Now the game plan for 2008....don't make this to difficult because if you do then it just won't work. Keep it simple stupid...as my Mom would always say....I'm not sure if she just wanted to call me stupid or if she really liked to say that phrase...anyway it stuck and I'm in therapy 3 days a week...just joking. Keeping it simple is the only way to create a new game plan. Just go to a white board in your office and write down three things....Customer Service, Sales, Operations. Under each one write down five goals to improve each one then leave it up on the board and start working on them. This shouldn't take you very long...you know what needs to be done the hard part is actually just getting it done. Write it down, keep it simple and get it done.

Now on the personal side of life regarding lowering your stress levels. Buy early and on the web. As you know BusinessDetroit.com loves to promote Detroit Businesses and some of these are Detroit area based, but some are not sorry to say, but they are great places to go to get the shopping done. First stop should be www.etoys.com this website is a great place to get toys for all those kids in your life. They will even wrap the presents and ship them anyway...this is a huge time saver. If you have adults to buy for another great site is www.woodwardavenue.com and www.redwheelbarrow.com both of these are locally owned in the Detroit Area. Woodward Avenue sells luxury items like Ray Ban sunglasses, Gucci bags, diamond rings and very nice artwork. The RedWheel Barrow sells tech stuff like IPODs, Computers, Palm Pilots, MP3 players and other great tech gifts. Just like the business side of life creating a list of tasks that need to get done is a great way to make sure your on track with everything. Make sure you post this on the Refrigerator and put a due date on each item...if you don't then it won't get done. Make sure you free up the last two weeks of the year to do nothing. This is a great goal for everyone, so you can enjoy, relax and just restart your mind and body for the next year.

Well as always I hope these tips help you and when you visit the sites I've listed make sure you mention us at BusinessDetroit.com. Happy Holiday's to all!