Buy Now, Save Later: And A Very Merry Creative Consulting Christmas (Part Two!)

In one of our very last blogs for 2020, we are wrapping up this blog series about the best things you can do for your business now to make the new 2021 the best year yet!

Hello, Summerville! Welcome back to the blog writer's desk! The year is slowly picking itself up and putting itself away, and boy was it one for the books. We are happy to see it go, and we are happy and excited to see what this new year will be bringing us. As all of us at Creative Consulting have been gathering for our last in-person meetings of 2020, it's been interesting to sit back and see what this year has taught us. First and foremost it has taught us how resilient our town is. Nothing can stop Summerville! In fact, through all of the challenges we have been through as a community, it has been incredible to see just how much we have supported one another and continued to grow together and for one another. We have seen compassion, hope, and the dedication each of you have to your families, community, and your passions.

We have also experienced so much support and an outpouring of love from all of you supporting small businesses of all kinds right here in town. You decided to shop small, give big, and give back to your community. You took more time to be proud of the movers, makers, and shakers right here in town, Thanks to that you now own beautiful pieces of artwork and homemade products made by your incredibly talented neighbors, and you have tried some of the best new dishes and desserts made from your neighbors that you might not have known about unless the pandemic had happened, a tough silver lining, but one just the same. We have also seen resilience in our industry that we are so thankful for. We are honored to support and care for your businesses, and to help build and support them to help reach all of your goals and more. It has been an honor working with each of you, and we look forward to ringing in 2021 with you and stepping into new beginnings. 

In part one of this blog, we spent time talking about all of the financial things you can do right now to help save on your 2020 taxes. While many of those decisions, purchases, and money moves might seem like a little bit of strain on your business accounts at the end of a very difficult year, we promise that they are still good decisions. While you might feel every penny this time of year, you will appreciate the time you dedicated to following the list in our previous blog and spending a little more money now. Come April 15th, your tax expenses will not be as challenging to cover, painful, or a surprise. In this blog, we are focusing more on the business aspects of closing out a year. What can you be focusing on and working on now that can help you create the best business plan for 2021? How can you make your goals become realities? How can you uplift and support your team? Let's talk about it! 

Year-End Count Down
Before we all wrap up our work for the new year and settle into our holiday parties with our coworkers, there is still so much left to do. This is our busiest time of the year, so we understand that sometimes things can get lost in the shuffle. Don't let that happen this year! Use this end of the year checklist to wrap up 2020 and get your head in the game for 2021! We know the pandemic has been devastating to so many of you, and many companies are still trying to recover from its reverberations. Keep strong, keep going, you've got this! 

• It's time to focus, plan, and lock in your holiday plan. Many companies will take off the last week or two of December for the holidays. Do you have a plan for your company and clients during this time? Do you have everything planned and in place to make this possible for your employees and profitable for everyone involved? If you are a client that is affected by this, make sure your needs are met before anyone goes off on holiday break! 
• Go over the goals you made for 2020, see how much you achieved, had to change, needed to edit because of the pandemic, what didn't work, and everything you learned along the way. Take all of that information and use it to set your goals for 2021. Sit down with your team and work on this together, and make it known to them what your plans and goals are for this upcoming year! 
• Take suggestions from your team on what can be done to improve the business from their end of things, and how you can improve their daily workload to help promote better business. 
• Gather up all of your tax documents and get caught up with all of your bookkeeping! 
• Revisit your pricing! This might be difficult on many levels depending on where you are, how your business is, and how 2020 affected it. If you're a new company and you've grown substantially recently, this is the time of the year to recognize that your goods and services are wanted, needed, and worth more than what you're currently charging. It's hard to allow yourself to admit that worth. It's even more difficult if you used your lower pricing to compete with your competitors and realize that raising your prices could put you in a similar situation with a newer and cheaper company. Trust your instincts and your worth, we promise things will be okay. Then there is the other side of the coin. Has business suffered this year? Are you needing a fast way to recover from the pandemic or another way to compete with your competition and fast? Lowering your prices might sound like a terrible thing, but it can truly save your business in the end! 
• Take time to honestly invest in updating your website and all of your social media platforms. Give them a good end of the year cleaning and updating, like a deep spring cleaning. If you don't want to, can't, or don't have the time, we might have the perfect company to help you with that! (Hint, hint!) 
• Inspect and revisit your business structure and model. Is it still working for you, or have you outgrown it and you're in need of a revamp? 
• Focus on and create a fresh marketing plan, one that is very well thought out and developed. Make sure that it is on-brand for your company, that this marketing plan is rooted in target audience research that you've collected over the year, and dedicated to making your company grow in 2021. 
• Spend some time thinking about your employees, and make sure to spend time thinking about the ones who have been with you for some time now before you begin hiring for the new year. Are their needs met creatively and professionally within what you can give them? 
• Think about some ways to give back to your employees, not only in terms of an end of the year bonus or a (safe) holiday party, but also in ways to make their office time better, their moral stronger, and their teamwork dedicated and focused. Plan fun events, (safe) gatherings, and (safe) leadership events for everyone to look forward to! 
• Sit down with your employees and get ahead in your vacation planning together. This can be key for small businesses when work needs to be shared while other teammates are gone. Get to planning now to not only make sure everyone gets the time they want but to ensure there is a business plan every time someone is gone! 
• Make sure to plan your vacation time, business owners! It is easy to sacrifice your time, but you need it just as much as anyone. Don't negate your rest and relaxation just because you own the company. 
• If 2020 taught us anything, it's to be prepared and to work together as a team when things got hard or when someone from the office was gone for extended periods. Were you prepared for that? Do you have a plan set in motion to cover anyone or any work when a team member is out of the office? If not, now is the time to start planning, who knows what 2021 could bring! 

From all of us at Creative Consulting, thank you for an incredible year! We deeply appreciate your support and friendship and couldn't do what we do without all of you and the incredible town of Summerville. We are so appreciative to our clients who have been with us for years, our new 2020 clients, and all of our future clients. We wish you all a very exciting and wonderful 2021! 

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