Automate Your Business Over The Holidays

Do you find it easy to step away from your business over Christmas and New Year? Or do you find yourself still answering enquiries, posting on social media and not actually taking a break?

Every business owner needs to learn how to automate their business to run over the holidays. Your best ideas and inspiration come from down-time - and not resting is a recipe for burnout. So let’s look at simple ways you can automate your clinic over the break, leaving you to chillax and reset for the new year.

Simple ways to automate your clinic business for the holidays

Check in with your current clients ASAP!

If you haven’t already, send out an email or message to all of your current clients. Remind them that you’re going to shut down for however many days/weeks - so if they need any refills on prescriptions, they need to tell you.

PS - This can be a great boost to your income right before Christmas!

Share when you’re going to be away from the business

While you’re at it, make sure you let everyone know when your clinic is going to be closed. This can give you a boost of last-minute bookings and requests. But it also can lead to some new bookings for the new year if some people have run out of time!

Remember that not everyone sees every email or social media post. So I recommend sharing it at least 3 times between social media and your newsletter. Make sure you cover:

• The dates you’re away from the business

• Whether you’ll be monitoring emails and messages

• How people can book appointments for when you’re back - aka where to find your booking system

• What clients should do if they run out of a prescription or experience unusual symptoms

• A reminder about your booking availabilities left for the year

Set up your social media replies

Hopefully you already have some social media auto-responses set up. If so, all you need to do is update the message and the times. If not, now is your time to get familiar with it!

For Facebook, jump over onto your page’s Business Suite, open your inbox, and head to ‘automated replies’ to set up an away message.

For Instagram, you can either use a 3rd party app to auto-reply, or you can use quick replies. With quick replies, you still have to jump on to send the reply - but it’s as easy as writing the shortcut word and hitting send.

These are best set up on the last day of the work year. You might even switch it on 1-2 days early if you’re booked up.

Set up your email out-of-office reply

While we’re at it, let’s make sure your email is set up to send an out of office reply. How you do this does depend on your email provider. For Gmail, you’ll find the option down the bottom of the General Settings page - and you can even set the specific dates in advance! For Outlook, look for automatic replies under the Mail Settings section.

Using another provider? A quick Google of your mail provider + automatic replies will pop up with the info you need.

Update your voicemail message

Do you have a phone for the clinic - whether it’s a landline or mobile? Write up a quick script and update your voicemail message on your last work day.

Make sure you cover when you’re away, when you’re back and what steps they should take in case of an emergency.

Schedule some content for the break and the new year

The biggest mistake that I see practitioners make over the holidays? They completely disappear from social media!

Now don’t get me wrong - you don’t have to be actively on social media every day of the year. But you do want to keep putting content out there. After all, many people spend more time on social media over the holidays!

This is where scheduling content is a great idea. It might be new content, but it can also be content you already created. You might share your top 5 blog posts for the year, or reshare a video you put out at the start of 2020 about setting healthy goals.

Both my clinic and Tech For Pracs will have content throughout the holiday period. The goal is to make sure we have 4 weeks of content ready to go for both by the time I close down my laptop for the break.

Consider promoting passive offers over the break

You might not want to promote your 1:1 services over December. But if you have more passive offers, now is a great time to share them. That way, you can make a trickle of income even when you’re away from the business.

For example, I’m currently promoting Zazen filters over on my clinic socials. You might have physical products or it could be a virtual product like an ebook.

Don’t have anything passive to share? Share a link to join your mailing list or download your freebie instead.

With the end of the year quickly approaching, I thought I would give you a heads up about what is on the cards here at Tech For Pracs!

• Tech for Pracs will be shut down from 18th Dec - 11th Jan. No new clients will be accepted over this time.

• I will not be monitoring any messages via social media, and I will not answer client calls

• I'll be occasionally checking my emails - this will be the only way to contact me over the break

• If something goes drastically wrong over the break, email me in capitals “HELP PLEASE” - that way, I can follow it up when I do check my emails.

• There are no remaining spots for websites or branding packages in 2020 - I'm taking bookings for January and February.

• If you have any small tech jobs that need addressing, there will be a 25% rush fee to complete it in December.

In 2021, I will be bringing you a bunch of amazing products and services based on your feedback and requests. Make sure you jump onto my mailing list below if you want to be the first to hear what is to come!