Sophia Noreen: Hello, everyone. Welcome back to another fantastic episode of the Boss It Podcast. My name is Sophia Noreen, and I'm going to be your host for today. So I'm going to do a little mini-episode because I feel like this is a very important topic, especially for people who are going into the holiday season right now and they're questioning if their projects and their business should go on pause. Naturally, when we approach the New Year and we have the holiday season, there are many businesses that are going to be busier that are offering products and services around gift-giving. But then there'll be other types of businesses saying the consulting realm and the real estate realm, and any of those businesses that are more of the seasonal, and more on the wedding planning in the wedding industry that actually might slow down. So now the question is, do you take an operational pause? And I would say, yes. We do this in health care a lot. We do pause programs because a lot of our clients and patients are not coming in because they're busy with family and friends. And the last thing they want to do is hang out with their health professional.
So we have operational pauses in our programs that are built-in. And today, I'm going to give you three tips on how to effectively carry out a pause in your programming or in your business. So the first tip is you do need to plan for it. A lot of companies, big and small, I find that don't plan appropriately for a pause. Now, the pause could be like, I'm giving the office a whole two weeks off, for example, or it could be that we're pausing one program for two weeks during the holiday season, or even for one week. And I find that the planning happens for some reason just a month or even two months before the season approaches. But if you are the type of program that is booking out clients and services, and you're booking outpatients months in advance, that's not always the best plan because now, your team has to do more work now to reschedule all your clients, patients, and your customers. But if you can plan for your program pauses even a year in advance, which is ideal because then your team members or you, as a solopreneur, can plan your vacation schedule accordingly.
I know how it is. If you can plan for your vacation a year in advance, wouldn't that be amazing because then you could get the best deals if you're planning on traveling? Or if you're doing a staycation, it's just something to look forward to saying I'm taking those two weeks off and I don't have to do anything. I will ensure that I get all my work done ahead of time if there are deliverables due at that time, which brings me to my next point. When you are planning a program pause, I would inform everyone who your business affects. So If you're working with partners, if you have referrals, if you have business partners, even existing clients, and customers, you should tell them in advance that I have a program pause coming up or the business is shutting down for the next two weeks. And by informing individuals ahead of time, that helps them prepare if they rely on your business for different services and different products. So the example I have is we have a mental health program as a part of our clinic. And we do program pauses twice a year. We do it in December and we also do it in March. In Canada, we have March break where the kids take a week off so we pause the program at that time for two reasons. One, many clients don't attend during these times of the year because, again, they are busy with their families. They take vacations, or the children are home. And then second, it allows our team to take time off. And there's no debate on who is taking time off because they do work in a group format. So from an operational standpoint, it only made sense for us to pause programs during those times of the year. Now, we work with referral partners. We let our referral partners know that there are no classes or groups going to be running during this time. We also inform all of the attendees of the groups saying that this is the schedule however, we have a program pause so you will not be attending during these two weeks or one week. Or we strategically developed a schedule so that we don't have a program pause falling in between a cohort.
Again, if you know the pause is coming, it really helps you plan for it. That brings us back to the point before. So if you are thinking about pausing your business plan for it ahead of time, so it can be the priority on the list otherwise if it's not a priority, it might not even happen. And then our final point is to reduce any new deliverables that need to be provided in and around the time of the program pause. Again, if you are on social media and you'd like to keep a social media presence even if you're on vacation, I would reduce other new initiatives a month in advance so that way, you can work on all the deliverables, and that way you can take time off comfortably, and you're not worrying about what you need to get done over vacation.
So again, really reduce the new a month in advance, maybe two weeks, so that way you can catch up on everything that you have consistently done when you're off. If you're a solopreneur, this is extremely important. It comes down to your time management. You may have to double up on a few things during that time so that way you're not falling behind, or you're not scrambling the last minute to figure things out. If you have a team, you can start reducing the workload on a few team members so they can achieve deliverables ahead of time so they're not scrambling. You may have to synchronize a few other action items so that way, there is consistent visibility during your program pause. I know that many solopreneurs, have to tobe visible on the platforms that are used to having you. This way, if you use scheduling service for social media, for example, then you are still visible when you're off on vacation. So definitely look into scheduling your social media posts. And if you have not done so already, we have a great episode on that. And if you want more information on scheduling tools and how to optimize your social media routine and consistency, you can go to episode 39 which talks all about that topic.
Okay, guys, let's go from the top. We have three tips for you. The first is to plan for your operational pauses either as a program. If you're working with a company or as a solopreneur, it's really great to plan ahead of time so you can make it a priority and you can schedule other things around your program pause. Next, inform others all the way from your referrals to your customers and your clients that you're serving. And then finally, ensure that you don't start anything new right before your program pause. You are giving the pause the priority and ensuring that you're finishing up any other deliverables that may need to be completed while you are off. And we gave the example of social media because it's best to show up consistently even if you're on a pause. I know people take pauses all the time and they're like, oh, there was no difference. But sometimes it does make a difference. If you take a long break, your engagement rate on some of these platforms really plummets. So having a consistent ability to show up even when you're on vacation is amazing. So we encourage you to check out episode 39 where we talked about how to become more consistent on social media and help you get off that crazy ongoing treadmill of social media posting. Okay, guys, I hope that was all helpful. Remember, you can catch us every week, same time, in the same place. And if you have not done so already, you can hit the subscribe or follow or bell so that way you always know when we drop an episode. And remember, make a plan and take action, and yes, you can have it all. I'll talk to you guys again next week.
