The Kawartha Small Business Podcast · The Kawartha Small Business Podcast

174: Holiday Thinking

·39 min·2 clips

Matt says he has “learned that I’m a really good coach.”

1. The Kawartha Small Business Podcast episode “Holiday Thinking” uses Boxing Day to talk about how business owners think differently around the holidays. 2. Brian Rump of Profit Coach and Matt Geraghty of Mattie Digital anchor the discussion, and both record from Thrive Podcast Studio at Thrive Coworking Community, 18 Kent Street West in downtown Lindsay, Ontario. 3. The episode asks what owners should do, and not do, when productivity drops, calendars fill up, and December feels different from the rest of the year. 4. Brian says retailers are ramping up for end-of-year sales while other businesses are trying to balance staffing, family time, and holiday events. 5. Matt describes holidays as a time when he has had four or five events in a day and a half, which he calls miserable. 6. Brian compares his current schedule to past years at the bank, when everyone else was off and his calendar was packed with mortgage and account work. 7. The hosts say some businesses should shut down for two weeks, while others need to work harder before and after the break because demand changes by season. 8. Brian points to a friend of the show who takes 10 days to two weeks off to visit his mom in B.C., then works more before the trip to make that possible. 9. Matt says businesses like haircuts or coaching depend on direct service, so time off has a real revenue cost. 10. The pair connect holiday planning to intentional choices, including deciding whether to keep working, take a week off, or schedule a quiet office project. 11. Matt says his own limiting belief is that he should always be doing something productive during Christmas, even reading business books or creating content. 12. Brian mentions a boardroom design project as the kind of quiet holiday task that can be scheduled instead of spilling into every spare day. 13. The discussion shifts to how people now expect Matt to be the “calm business owner” after hearing him talk publicly about time off. 14. Matt says a call with Ian lasted about an hour and led to useful advice, and another friend told him he might need to step away from his business for a month. 15. Brian brings up Mike Michalowicz’s book “Clockwork,” where the goal is a four-week vacation and the system exists to make that possible. 16. Matt says the best owners know when to shut it down for a week, pre-plan emergencies, and then actually follow through. 17. Brian says his business was much more chaotic almost five years ago, when he was working alone, then reluctantly added help, and later replaced underperforming team members. 18. He names Emily and Sarah as current teammates who are “extremely talented” and “extremely skilled,” which he connects to lower stress and better delivery. 19. The conversation is conversational and self-reflective, with jokes about being brilliant, working through holidays, and Brian eventually playing a professor in the play “Bunny” at Lindsay Little Theatre. 20. Small-business owners, coaches, and solo operators who plan holidays around client demand will get the most from this episode, while listeners wanting a tightly edited business lesson may skip it.

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