Thanksgiving Turkey Killing 8.3% Profits Annually

Posted by The Dominator in He Said on November 25, 2009 | one response

I’m seriously thinking that we need to eliminate Thanksgiving from our list of approved holidays from here on out.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m a devout patriot, and agree wholeheartedly with the holiday festivities, and getting together with family. I enjoy the games, sharing stories of the past, and watching the kids play with Grammies dog.

But we all know that turkey has a chemical in it called Tryptophan that makes us a bit sleepy. It doesn’t seem to work on children, but for the rest of us, we tend to take a little nap after the main course and enjoy things.

And after a few hours, everyone seems to wake up…

…except business owners!

They seem to sleep until after the New Year! For the entire month of December, they seem to be asleep. Not wanting to do business.

If a business is taking one whole month off work, they are reducing their profits by 1/12, or 8.3%. Many of the large businesses that have gone under in the last few years, had a decline of only 5-10% in profits. Can you imagine what would happen to your business if you could boost your bottom line by 8.3%? Would that help you stay in business?

Here’s a typical conversation that I have this time of year:

Me: “Hey Joe, you wanna have some coffee and talk about that new widget you’re working on?”

Joe: “Sure, but with the holidays and all, lets wait until after the New Year”.

Is he really in business? The lessons that I grew up with were that business owners were the ones that put in the extra hours. But it seems that business owners in the last few years seem to like the title of business owner, but are trying to scrape by with a 40 hour work week.

Before you go ballistic in the comments below, I know that there are a few exceptions to this rule, where the business owner is truly busy during this time of year – toy stores, electronics retailers, etc – but those aren’t the businesses or personalities I’m talking about.

I’m talking about the average business owner or independent consultant that just up and takes all of December off, and then complains for the next 6 months that they don’t have any business in the pipeline.

Thanksgiving , Christmas and New Years are one day holidays. Don’t disillusion yourself into thinking that it’s one big month-long party. As a business owner, you’ve bound yourself to making certain sacrifices, like spending less time at family gatherings. Your business (successful ones anyhow) must still open up the day after a holiday – and you must mentally be there!

Even if you aren’t being flooded with customers/clients the day after Christmas, this is a great planning and catch up time – and a great time to have coffee with other business owners and keep that networking flow going. What you plan in your pipeline today, can be a goldmine tomorrow.

So do the rest of us a favor, lay off the turkey at Thanksgiving, stay awake for the month of December, and never, ever – under any circumstances – say that you’re too busy to schedule an appointment until January.