Is Christmas An Opportunity or A Time To Relax?

I want to talk to you about whether should you take a break over the Christmas period.

As I’m recording this, it is Christmas and obviously many people want to take a break and celebrate it with their family and so on.

And what happens is many people will switch off or basically close down the computer and don’t really pay attention or follow or work on their online business during this period.

And the usual reason for that is because it’s Christmas, and they want to spend time with family, and they want to have a rest, and so on and so forth, which is obviously completely fair.

That’s totally fine because many of you have worked very hard through the whole year on your business, many of you have worked overtime at work just to pay for your business online, and many of you have sacrificed a lot during the year to do that.

So obviously, yes, take a break; you deserve that.

However, I do want to explore this with you, so you can also see this as an opportunity and also see this as a chance for you to jet-pack your business.

But obviously a few common sense factors here.

I fully appreciate, and I do understand, that many of you are celebrating with relatives who may be a bit older or who are sick, and this might be their last Christmas.

I fully appreciate there are a certain amount of emotions involved in Christmas because it is a very sentimental time of the year.

And obviously, if you are celebrating with somebody who may not be here next year, then, yes, I do sympathize.

So please understand that I am a human, and I understand, but…

…business doesn’t care.

Business doesn’t care about your feelings, and you need to learn to set that aside.

So yes, spend time with your family, enjoy it, eat a lot of food, enjoy, and relax.

Relax from your day job and so on. That’s all fine and well.

But I want to explore this with you to understand that there is a great deal of opportunity for you out there because out of the tens and tens of millions of people who are online right now who have been trying to make money online, the vast majority of them will not work over Christmas for the reasons I just gave you.

And that means there is a great deal of opportunity for you because, during the next two to three weeks, you can be working on your business with the time that you’re given.

After all, most of you are not working over Christmas in your regular jobs.

You are given this extra time here and you can use that to jet-pack your business.

So let me explore this with you.

The Christmas period, it is a very popular time for product launches and new things coming out and new trending ideas because Christmas is a very profitable time of year.

That means that if there are any promotions happening or any trending topics or any brand new ideas and new aspects you can talk about, then you will be ahead of the game because most people are sitting watching Christmas movies, eating turkey.

So that’s the first obvious thing.

And that means that when you send emails to your list, their inboxes are less crowded, which means your open rate will increase, and your click rate will increase.

And also, because you are one of the only ones operating, it means that you stand out.

So that’s a very obvious one.

And also common sense guys, if you look at the calendar of product launches and just stuff happening, it’s quite busy.

There’s a reason for that because everyone’s at home with their families, they’re bored, they’re drunk, they buy things, which means that for a marketer, this is a golden opportunity.

Christmas is a great time of year because people are in a buying mode.

They’re used to the buying, they’ve been brainwashed.

You have to “buy stuff, buy stuff, buy stuff. It’s Christmas, buy stuff”, which means that for you, it’s like shooting fish in the barrel because everyone’s there.

And anyone who comes to your sales pages or review pages or whatever you have, they’re there to buy.

And it is a golden opportunity for you.

Also, I want to talk about, do you actually deserve a break?

I’m not questioning your work ethic for your regular nine-to-five job here.

I’m talking about your online business because throughout the entire year, literally from January 1st until Christmas Eve, I hear many excuses.

The most common one is, “Philip, I haven’t got time, I haven’t got time, I’m busy, I haven’t got time.”

Yet, now the chances are you most likely have at least seven days off from work over Christmas.

I appreciate some of you guys may maybe work at Christmas, that’s fine, I’m not talking to you.

But if you are a regular nine-to-five Joe, then the chances are you probably have between seven and two weeks off over Christmas.

You’ve just been given time; you’ve been given time by your work.

“Here, don’t work, take some time off and stay at home.”

And you have the opportunity here to do some good for your business.

Now am I saying to ignore your family and lock yourself in the room and never speak to them?

No, of course not.

I’m saying, what if you stole two, three hours a day and sat down on your business, because throughout the whole year, some of you do complain over and over and over and over again, “I haven’t got time, I haven’t got time, I haven’t got time.”

Yet, you do have time to have a break??

You do have time to take the weekends.

What did you do for Thanksgiving week?

Did you take the week off?

Or did you work in business?

Have you traced back over the entire year, whenever you are given some time, and assessed if you are using the time wisely?

You usually take that time to have a break because you think you deserve it, and yet you have the audacity to complain you haven’t got time to build a business.

Understand that these periods over Christmas and so on, these are golden opportunities because if you analyze your behaviour over the whole year, and let’s see if I can take five days a week, you only have an hour a night after work to try working your business.

An hour a night, that’s only five hours a week.

Five hours a week, that’s only 20 hours a month, that’s nothing.

Over Christmas, imagine if you did three hours a night, suddenly you are three 3X your output in space of literally a week.

That is very powerful because that can be a difference between you getting that little booster that you need.

Because one of the big milestones in anybody’s life when it comes to marketing is making your first sale or getting your first number one ranking in Google or getting your first number one ranking on YouTube.

And the thing is, over Christmas, you have a very good chance of getting that because there is technically less competition.

So let’s say, you’re doing a blog post about something, whatever it is.

Let’s say seasonal, let’s say it’s something that’s happening right now.

For example, as I’m recording this, this whole ChatGPT thing is taking the world by storm, even though it’s nothing that special, but every second video I see is about ChatGPT.

It means that what if you made some videos about that over Christmas and you’ve got your first number one ranking and you’ve got like 5,000 views in a few days?

That would not have happened if you were sitting on your bum watching Christmas movies.

Equally, you might only have a list of, let’s say, 50 or 100 people, and you might send an email out to promote something, whatever it may be.

And because Christmas and everyone’s sitting on their ass watching TV, bored at their mind, half drunk, they open their email and they buy something from you.

You make your first sale, which wouldn’t have happened if you were sitting on your bum watching movies.

And this kind of thing, it is a huge opportunity for you to get some work in, especially over Christmas.

In the morning when your family is asleep or in the afternoon while your family goes for a walk.

You can still spend all day with them, you can have dinner with them, you can have lunch with them, you can sit and watch movies, but in the morning before your children wake up or in the afternoon while your wife has a nap, why don’t you work a little bit?

Why don’t you do an hour here, an hour there?

Tonight when you would normally get blind drunk with your friends because it’s Christmas, why don’t you just have a couple of beers and in the morning, when you would normally be in bed with a hangover, spend that extra hour and a half on your business.

Over the course of a two-week period between Christmas and New Year, those extra three or four hours will add up literally to about four months worth of your regular effort during the year.

Imagine going into January, you made your first sale and you’ve got a number one ranking and you’ve got some views on your video or you’ve got some views on your blog post.

Imagine that boost you’re going to have.

Imagine that sense of achievement you’re going to have knowing that you did the right thing.

Now obviously, I’m not saying ignore your family. I’m not saying lock yourself in the room and just block everything out, I’m saying see it for the opportunity it is.

You’re being given time off by work, you’re being given this great opportunity to work on your business.

Grab the chance that is given to you, right?

Enjoy it while you can, do it while you can, because if you don’t, come January 10th and you go back to work, and I hear the same excuses, “I haven’t got time.”

My initial thought is, do you or don’t you or won’t you, because when it comes down to it, guys, that same mindset.

Forget Christmas for a second. That same mindset translates into January.

In January, what’s your excuse? “I’m broke, I haven’t got time, I have to work overtime.” Why?

Because you spent too much over Christmas.

Go to February.

February, usual thing of we’ve got Valentine’s Day, right?

If that falls on Saturday, you haven’t got time because you’ve got Valentine’s Day and so on and overlaps, and then you’ve got Easter, and then you’ve got the summer holidays.

Then during May, usually there are a lot of weddings in May and so on and so on and so on.

Suddenly, if you add in all these extra little bits and bobs, all these celebrations, all these things you do, suddenly you realize that you do have time, it’s just that you choose what you spend your time on.

And so hopefully you understand what I’m trying to get out there, guys, because it’s not about Christmas, it’s about the whole year, it’s about all these micro excuses you’re making as to why you haven’t got time.

And if you were to draw these out on a calendar and be brutally honest with yourself, and you look at it and go, “Okay, Christmas… Okay, Easter… Summer holidays… “

And you start looking at it and you go, huh? There is literally hundreds and hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands of hours, I’m just washing away with all these excuses.

What if I just took a handful of these events, a handful of these things and cut back in some way?

So like I said, tonight, instead of getting drunk and waking up with a hangover like normal because it’s Christmas, what if you only have a few beers and still enjoy yourself, enjoy time with your family, enjoy time with your friends.

But then in the morning, when you know for a fact, normally you’ll be lazing around with a hangover or sleep, get up that little bit early and do an hour, do an hour and a half in the morning and then carry on with a day and then celebrate Christmas.

So you can get the best of both worlds and you actually get some freaking work done, okay?

Because guess what?

That’s what I’m going to be doing, and that’s what people who run a real business do.

So should you take that time off Christmas?

Yeah, of course you should, but do it in a logical way. Do it in a way where you can keep growing your business.

And one final point, guys.

Many of my students will be surprised that Christmas is here again, even though Christmas comes every day, same time, same week, same time of year, every single year.

I want to ask you this, if you are taking time off, have you prepped for it?

Have you got a buffer?

If you have a buffer of let’s say 10 weeks worth of content, then take time off.

You deserve it because you are ready, you’re prepared, you’re ready for that.

If you are looking at your calendar and you go, “Huh? Pre-plan? What do you mean? I haven’t got time for that.”

You need to analyze your behavior and change that. Because guess what? Christmas is coming up again next year, again the next year.

Easter is coming up again this year, very soon. Summer holidays is coming up this year again, so start prepping for stuff.

You know it’s coming, you know it’s there, so start getting ready.

So if you are building a business and Christmas has taken you by surprise and you have nothing ready, you have nothing preplanned, you have no content to be scheduled to go out, so you have no buffer, you need to wake up and slap yourself silly and realize that you are a business owner now, you have to wake up and treat this like it is, a business.

And if you are that kind of lazy and going, “Oh, I’ve got a little content, and I’ve got nothing ready, but I need time off.”

Then you have a very twisted mindset, and you must prep for that next time. Be self-aware enough to know what we can do, whatever thing is coming up in the next few months after Christmas.

So let’s say you might have a wedding to go to in January or some family gathering or something, whoever, whatever you have to do, at some point in January, February, March, you have something that you’re going to be pulled away from your business.

Try prepping for it, try getting ready for it and have content pre-scheduled, and have content in the bank ready to go so you can schedule ahead so your business keeps running.

So your business keeps growing while you’re away.

So I want you to really have a good think about what you’re doing, have a good think about how are you approaching Christmas.

If you’re approaching it willy-nilly and just going, “Oh, it’s Christmas. Oh my god. Okay, well I’ll see you in two weeks, Philip, because I have to take time off.”

That’s unprofessional and idiotic and it just lacks focus.

But if you have content scheduled or if you are planning to do some work, to do something to grow a business, great.

Otherwise, the problem is if you don’t do that, then you’re setting a bad precedent, you’re setting a bad pattern of behavior that you feel is acceptable.

So I hope that make sense.

Now I’m going to go ahead and schedule this audio recording for Christmas because this is what I’m prepping for.

This is me recording stuff before Christmas because I know it’s coming, it’s right around corner and I’m getting ready for it.

So guys, happy holidays, Merry Christmas.

I hope you celebrate it with your family.

I hope you have a good time. I hope you do get some chance to relax and unwind from the world, but I hope you do it in a logical and sensible way.

I hope you’ve pre-planned, I hope you’ve prepped and so you can enjoy Christmas with your family without any stress or worry, and it keeps your business running.

Cheers, guys!