5 Stress-Free Strategies to Keep Your Coaching Business Visible Over the Holidays

The holiday season is busy—family gatherings, travel, parties—but it doesn’t mean your coaching business has to take a backseat. In this episode of Coach Smarter, Stephen Box breaks down why shutting things down completely during the holidays could cost you clients and revenue. More importantly, he shares five simple strategies to stay visible and top of mind without overwhelming yourself or missing out on holiday fun.

By the end of this episode, you’ll discover:

• Why stepping away from your business entirely could hurt your long-term success.
• The key to staying active during the holidays without burning out.
• How to connect with potential clients when everyone seems distracted.
• Ways to stand out and make your marketing memorable during this unique time of year.
• The one thing you need to prioritize to maintain balance while staying consistent.

Transcript

Stephen Box: 0:00

When it comes to the holidays, how do you go about marketing your coaching business? Do you tend to shut things down or do you see it as an opportunity to get ahead of the curve? Well, on today's episode, I'm going to talk to you about why shutting things down while understandable can actually be a huge mistake that is going to cost you clients and money. And I'm also going to talk to you about how do you manage to do this and stay top of mind for those potential clients without getting overwhelmed and without having to miss out on the holiday fun. And that's coming up next right here on Coach Smarter. Hey there, welcome to another episode of Coach Smarter, brought to you by Unshakable Habits. I am your host, Stephen Box, and today we're talking all about how to keep your coaching business visible during the holidays without being overwhelmed. And look, I get it. The holidays are crazy busy. Between traveling or having family come to you, holiday parties, And all the fun activities that there are to do this time of year, it can feel so easy to just say, you know what, I'm going to put my business on hold, and I'm going to enjoy the holiday season, and I totally get that, and that is 100 percent your choice if that's what you want to do. But I want to let you know this, if you do that, you're costing yourself clients and money, and maybe you're okay with it, and if you are, totally cool. But if you don't want to put yourself in that position, then I think you're going to get tremendous value out of today's episode. So let's talk about first and foremost, why would this even be a mistake? How is this costing you clients and money? Well, there's a couple of ways. So number one, I see a lot of times, especially when it comes to coaches, that there is a belief that the holiday season that no one is going to buy from you. Every year I see this in social media groups, it's the number one reason that people give for things slowing down. Oh, it's the holidays. Nobody wants to do anything. Well, let me tell you, for the most part, that's actually true. But it's not completely true. The numbers that I've seen suggest that about 75 percent of people either work in a industry where things shut completely down and they go into vacation mode and so they're not thinking about coaching or they work in a industry like the hospitality industry where they're so busy they don't have time for coaching. But 75 percent is not 100, which means that there's still about 25 percent of people out there who may very well be looking for your coaching. And keep in mind that not everyone celebrates the holidays the same. Some people don't even celebrate any of the holidays. So, just because the holidays are here does not mean you can't still potentially get clients right now. Now, it may not be as many as you would normally get, But there are still opportunities out there for you. And because so few coaches stay active this time of year, you actually have a really good chance at landing one of those clients. The other thing is you have people right now that have been following you. They're seeing your content. Maybe they're not commenting or liking or sharing your stuff. Maybe they haven't got on your email list yet, or maybe they have, but they haven't really done anything else, but they've been watching you. And if you just shut things down for a month, let's say, from Thanksgiving through New Year's here, it's a little over a month. Those people see you disappear and they at some point would just kind of forget about you and they'll move on to somebody else, right? Somebody else who is posting on a consistent basis, someone who else is providing value to them throughout the holiday season. And they will end up signing up with that person when they are ready to, which if you work in a field like health coaching or life coaching or even business coaching, You know that New Year's is a really big time for people to decide that they need to make some changes and they look to hire a coach to help them do it. The other thing is just that, talk about that New Year's thing. Because if you're someone who is putting that stuff out now, look, I get it, people have family stuff, they're traveling, all that good stuff, right? But I can guarantee you, Christmas, Thanksgiving, whatever, people are going to be sitting around the house, scrolling on their phones, looking at Instagram, looking at Facebook, looking at TikTok, whatever, and they're going to still see your stuff. They may not interact with it, but they see it. So if you're putting that stuff out there, they're constantly getting that reinforcement of you, and come January, when they're ready to move, or maybe February, if you Uh, have someone who wants to try to do it on their own first and they need a little time to, to fail, right? And then they come looking for a coach, but those people are going to come look to you first. If you wait until January to start marketing, you are now already behind because all the people who are ready to go at the beginning of January They've now been following other people, and your sudden reappearance may not be enough to get them to go, Oh yeah, let me go work with them. So that's all the reasons why I think it's a bad idea. Again, it's judgment free. If you want to shut things down and take that time completely off, that is your decision. I'm just letting you know, this is the negative consequences that's going to occur. If you do that, all right, if you are still here listening right now, that means I have either a convinced you that you do need to stay active during the holiday season and you want some tips on how to best go about doing that, or you came into this episode already knowing that and you're just ready for me to get to it already. So I'm not going to make you guys wait much longer. But I do want to throw in one really fast acknowledgement before we jump into the five tips that are going to help you keep your coaching business visible and top of mind for potential clients during the holiday season without getting overwhelmed. So here's the acknowledgement. This can be hard. This time of year is busy. I get it. I'm busy. You're busy. We're all busy. There's a lot going on. I'm busy. And if you try to do this, it is a very thin line between being successful and overcommitting yourself. And if you overcommit yourself, the quality of the content you put out is not going to be that good, and you're going to lose any semblance of balance between your work and your personal time. And I don't want either one of those for you. And that's why I have very carefully created these five tips with that in mind. So number one, keep it simple. Focus on one to two marketing channels. So for example, maybe you have a social media following as well as an email list. Well, I would say focus on one of your social media channels, whichever one tends to be the most successful, and focus on your email list. Maybe you're going to focus on two social media channels. But two tops and if you can narrow down to just one even better because the reality is if you are trying to Be everywhere because every social media channel especially needs like specialized content, right? they all want you to post things in a certain way make the content sound a certain way for their platforms and That can really get you in trouble Also, keep in mind that you don't necessarily have to post every single day. People kind of expect there to be a little bit of a slowdown during the holiday season. So, even if you're posting every single day right now, that doesn't mean you have to necessarily post every single day during the holidays. You just need to make sure you're posting at least three, four times a week to make sure that people continue to see you. And this will help you keep from shredding yourself too thin while keeping you visible. Number two is batch your content. Now, you've probably heard of content batching before, but I think it's absolutely a necessity this time of year. If you can dedicate just one or two days to create all of your content in advance, you'll It is going to save you so much time. And if you have a software program that will allow you to post your social media stuff in advance, or you're sending, get your emails ready to go out in advance, um, then you can do that. I actually usually use, uh, Instagram or Facebook for the most part with my social media stuff. So I just use the built in. Uh, Publishing system there through Meta, and I also use ConvertKit to, uh, however many emails I'm going to be sending out. So, really simple tools to make that happen, and if you can get all that done, it's going to be one or two days that are going to be really busy and maybe a little stressful, but After those two days, you're done, right? Everything is good. So love that idea. Number three, share holiday themed stories, you know, or just any kind of holiday content even. So, share with your clients the things that you are doing during the holidays that they can relate to or that they can get some insights from. You know, a lot of, uh, health coaches is a great example. Nowadays, talk about the You know, having a, a balanced eating approach and not trying to be perfect and things like that, but then they put themselves out as being perfect. And this is a great time to like, look, post a video of you like eating some chocolate or something, right? Like let people know that it's okay. I mean, you've been talking about it's okay. Show them that you do that stuff. So it's a really good opportunity for people to get to know you. Kind of personally, uh, you can also share any client success stories that are going on during the holiday. If you have previous content that has done really well for you, that you can maybe repurpose and put a holiday spin onto. That also works really great, uh, short content, such as just like quick tip type videos are really good, or I love doing these personally, just open up your phone and have an idea for a topic and just Create a reel on Instagram for it or wherever you post your stuff and just make like a little quick video for it doesn't have to be very long, like 30 to 90 seconds long, and just let people kind of be able to connect with you in that way. It doesn't require a whole lot of effort to get those done. And I think it's really a personable and relatable type thing that so many of us as coaches miss out on. Because we're so busy trying to think like how, how do I put out content that's gonna get, you know, eyeballs and bring me clients and things like that. This is really the best time of year to like let people get to know you a little bit. Let them start to, uh, to vibe with you, right? Uh, number four is offer some kind of like small holiday freebie that you can put together. Uh, so. If you are a health coach, for example, uh, maybe you put together a recipe book, like a healthy recipe book for the holidays. Even if your clients don't use it, the fact that you're sending them a recipe, some recipes that are healthy and delicious, make sure they're actually delicious, then they're going to love that, even if they don't end up using those, you know, at the dinner table with family, maybe it's something they do on their own and they really enjoy those. You know, if you're a business coach, you know, talk to your clients about what they can be doing to grow their business, just like I'm giving you guys here in terms of this. Uh, you could easily just put together like a little freebie for that to help them out. Or maybe, you know, if you have, um, clients who you know that they have their own clients that they're going to be sending gifts to. Maybe put together like a little cool holiday gift giving guide for them or something like that, right? Just, like, there's a whole lot of things that you can do. That really would make a lot of sense and you know, again, you just promote that through your normal channels But this is something that doesn't have to be overly complicated It's unique to this time of year and on top of that It's something that most people aren't doing so it is again It's a way for you to stand out separate from what a lot of your competition is gonna be doing And number five is set realistic boundaries for working personal time. So block off specific times that you're going to do different tasks in your business. So maybe if you still are doing coaching calls, you know, block off a time for those. If you have like marketing or admin stuff, block off times for those. And at the same time, make sure that you're also blocking off time to do a workout or blocking off time to spend with family. And then if you do all of these things and you've got stuff, you know, uh, scheduled in advance and you're taking care of yourself and you're putting out quick content and all of these things, then guess what? You can easily take some time off. You can go out and do all the fun holiday stuff. Without losing out because you actually got this stuff put together, but it's going to require a little bit of work up front. If you're willing to do that, you can stay top of mind to potential clients all through the holiday season. Be the first person that they think about come January when they're ready to rock and roll. And you can do it all without overwhelming yourself. Because remember You don't need to be perfect. Perfection is not the goal. Hopefully you guys got some great value out of today's episode. If you did, I would love to hear about it. Feel free to either shoot me a message over on Instagram at Unshakable Habits or down in the show notes, there is a link where you can send me a text message and just let me know what valuable insights did you get out of today's episode. Also, if you are looking for some accountability during the season, uh, just, you know, just somebody to kind of check in, you know, hold your feet to the fire a little bit. We do have a free accountability Facebook group. Uh, the link for that is also down in the show notes and you can go ahead and sign up. Join us free in there, and make sure you come back next week for a special Thanksgiving Day episode where I'm going to be talking about one of my very favorite topics, and that is Gratitude. Because I'm going to talk about how a 5 minute gratitude habit can really improve your decision making. So you do not want to miss that. Uh, as always, I want to remind you guys that today is a great day to break free from the chaos and start living life on your terms.