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Key Takeaways The holiday season can disrupt service-based businesses with shifting demand, employee time off and cash flow fluctuations.
By analyzing past trends, planning operations and marketing in advance and managing cash flow proactively, you can stay steady through the holidays and start the new year strong.
The holidays can be one of the trickiest times of year for service-based business owners. Between client vacations, employee time off, shifting consumer priorities and unpredictable cash flow, it’s easy to either get blindsided by a slowdown or overwhelmed by a sudden surge in demand.
No matter what industry you’re in, understanding and preparing for holiday seasonality can make all the difference between coasting through the season confidently and scrambling to recover in January.
Here’s how to anticipate holiday shifts in your business and set up your operations, marketing and cash flow to handle them smoothly.
Related: 5 Things Every Entrepreneur Should Do This Holiday Season
Understand your seasonal patterns
The first step to preparing for seasonality is knowing your patterns. Pull data from previous years, even if it’s just a few months of invoices or CRM records, and look for trends.
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