Santa Claus is coming to town: How to navigate the Christmas period in your trade business

In the first episode of Season 7, Andy and Angela talk about the ‘most wonderful time of the year’, navigating the Christmas period in your trade business, including closures, staff leave, social events, and more!

Andy
Hey guys. Andy here. Before we jump into this week’s episode, I wanna ask you a question. How are you going with your trade business right now? As you know, I talk to a lot of trade business owners and I continue to hear a few things. They’re struggling to find and retain good stuff. They’re wondering how to set up systems and structures, and they’re working way too many hours, and they’re actually feeling completely burned out.

Angela and I have been fixing these exact challenges since 2010 when we started Lifestyle Tradie, and the one thing we know after all these years is if you keep doing the same thing, you’re going to get the same results. Listen guys, 2023 is gonna be very different from previous years, so why don’t you future proof your business today? Book in a free strategy session with me so that we can have a chat and work out the best steps for you and your business moving forward. Head to lifestyletradie.com.au to book in time now. Look forward to chatting soon. Jingle Bells, jingle bells. Jingle all the way.

Ange
Oh, what fun it is to ride in a one-horse open sleigh.

Andy
Hey. Oh, okay. Gosh, I feel like I sing a lot on these podcasts. I’ve done Bon Jovi renditions and now the Christmas cast.

Ange
Well, you know what, we are just amazing singers and we wanna share it with our listeners.

Andy
Oh, you are welcome everyone.

Ange
So speaking of our listeners, I’d like to say a huge welcome back to a brand new season of The Tradie Show, together in trade business. So for all of those new here, I’m Ange and I’m joined by my husband and business partner, Andy.

Andy
Hey everyone. Ange and I started this podcast for tradies in business who wanna scale up and kick some serious goals. Each week we’ll break down a different topic along with some tips and tricks we’ve learnt from owning our own plumbing business for over 20 years.

Ange
That’s right. Plus, we’ll source the best of the best guests who are experts in their field to give you an even deeper insight into topics relevant to the trade industry. Sounds good?

Andy
Sounds amazing to me. But before we get into today’s episode, you might have already guessed what it’s all about from our amazing singing. Mm, yes, that’s right. Christmas is just around the corner.

Ange
Yes it is.

Andy
Yeah. But first I just wanna talk about a book recommendation I’ve got for you guys as well.

Ange
Okay, Andy. So what book have you got for us today?

Andy
Well, it’s actually one of your favorite Ange.

Ange
Oh.

Andy
So I’m sure you’ll be keen to chat all about it. It’s called The One Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan.

Ange
Oh, yeah. I super love this book.

Andy
Yeah. The book goes through the value of focusing on one thing, one important task at any time in order to actually get things done. I thought it would be good to bring it up because we are so close to the end of the year and for a lot of people it often gets to this time of year and they’re like, what the hell have I done in the past year? And they sometimes feel like they’ve made no progress. But it’s actually never too late. You just have to kickstart it right now.

Ange
Yeah, so this book is great and I seriously feel like a broken record telling our Lifestyle Tradie members to read it all the time. It actually goes through the ideas of having purpose, priority, and productivity. And the things that stop you from having or achieving them. I would actually really recommend that if you are stuck in a bit of a rush and you want to kick some goals or tick maybe some tasks off your to-do list before the end of the year, or maybe even read it over the next two months to gear yourself up for a great 2023, that’d be a good idea.

Andy
Absolutely. If 2022 hasn’t been super productive, spend the next two months setting your goals for 2023 and getting yourself motivated and prepared to kick them out of the park.

Ange
Yeah, absolutely. I totally agree. So that said, let’s get back onto this topic of Christmas. And I can already hear some of our listeners going, oh my God, Christmas, it’s only October.

Andy
Yeah. Crazy.

Ange
But how many of us have already seen Christmas mince pies in the bakery or Christmas decorations at your local shopping center? Have you seen some?

Andy
I think I heard Christmas carols playing in um, Coles the other day. I mean, it’s ridiculous. It’s so far away, but I always love it when you see hot cross buns in January when Easter is not in April.

Ange
It’s crazy, crazy. I’d say they actually hit the shelves on Boxing Day.

Andy
Along with an intense amount of chocolate Easter eggs just everywhere.

Ange
Yeah. Great for the taste bud, but maybe not so great for the waistline.

Andy
Yeah, that’s right. But you know, if you haven’t seen anything about Christmas yet, then just wait till Halloween is over. Then you’ll know we’re on the downhill run to Christmas.

Ange
Yes. So that said, it’s time to think about Christmas and the New year period in your trade business.

Andy
Yes.

Ange
So that you give yourself enough time to prepare. Guess when that starts?

Andy
When does it start, Ange?

Ange
It starts now. And that’s exactly what we wanna discuss in this episode. How to prepare your business for this period.

Andy
Yeah, I love it. Cause I remember the days when I was really guilty of preparing for this period in mid-December. And you know what? It is way too late. And most tradies were in our busiest time. Just got her head down trying to finish the work for the end of the year.

Ange
Yeah, absolutely. It’s seriously too late to start this stuff mid-December, but if you haven’t started yet, then don’t stress. I reckon you should use this episode as your kick up the butt and a bit of a to-do list. So in saying that, Andy, what would you suggest to our listeners to tackle first?

Andy
Yeah, the first thing I’d be doing is deciding if I even want to keep the business open over this Christmas, New Year’s period. And this really does depend on your trade. For example, builders will generally take the whole of January off.

Ange
I guess they do.

Andy
But you know, if you’re a maintenance plumber, spark is anyone that does maintenance work. A consideration would be how busy the business is or how busy the business was in the past during this time. Everyone knows I love data, and the data tells you this story really quickly. So check out your revenue you made in your profit and loss last Christmas period. And that’ll help you decide on what you wanna do and how much you want to work over this period. It’s interesting, some of your team definitely don’t wanna work, but I’ve definitely have team members as well that are like, oh my God, I wanna work then because I don’t wanna be away when everyone’s away.

Ange
Yeah. Valid. So I wanna touch on how busy the business is first, because typically, and from what we experience with Dr. Drip early to mid-December is, you mentioned this before, super crazy busy for tradies. I know our customers will like, let’s get that second bathroom, the toilet working or whatever. Cuz I’ve got a whole house full of people coming over for Christmas day. Like it was literally chaotic. Customers literally come outta the woodwork wanting things done around their home, you know, because they’re hosting these huge events for family and friends for Christmas.

Andy
Yeah. It’s like, oh hi. Um, it’s December 24. Um, I’ve just got some leaking taps and I really was hoping that we could get it done before Christmas. Oh, okay. Mrs. Jones. So how long have they been leaking for? Oh, they’ve been leaking for about three or four months, but we definitely want it done before Christmas.

Ange
Today.

Andy
And you just laugh and go, you are kidding me.

Ange
Yeah, look, that lead up to Christmas was always hectic and it was a period where we literally needed all hands on deck.

Andy
Yeah, so much so that the team knew they couldn’t take large chunks of annual leave in the December, late November, December period because it really did take its toll on the whole company because everyone wants to get through their work, and if you get one or two people take some time off, then it’s just an absolute disaster. So yes, we’d well prepared the team. We gave them a heads up that it would be busy and there might be overtime as well. So everyone knows that coming into this Christmas period, get ready for it. We are gonna be flying with all guns blazing.

Ange
Yeah. Good for your team to have an honest conversation about expectations from the business, especially if they’re perhaps new to the team. So yes, this conversation is really important. Early in the year, which guess what is right now if you haven’t done this already? Interestingly, Christmas was like literally turning off a tap for us. Christmas day was that trigger that the business literally just slowed down.

Andy
Yeah, and it’s interesting over the many years of being in business, how we changed things. There was a period that I would try and shut down the business through January, give everyone time off, and it was our time to relax as well. But what actually happened when we had our team of obviously 17, because there were so many people on wages, and if I hadn’t had that bucket load of cash sitting there, January was turning into a really big loss. So I realized that definitely wasn’t the way to go for us and we needed to split the team and make sure that some people worked and some people had time off and we, we sort of switched it around a bit.

Ange
Yeah. Look, school holidays, I guess kicks in, right? And people start going away and that’s why our jobs slowed down from a maintenance perspective.

Andy
Well, they did slow down, but there was a period there that it felt like every tradie, this is going back 10 years ago. Every tradie shut down it over that period. So we actually turned that around. I was saying we were losing money and then I started advertising heavily in January and all of a sudden it was one of our most profitable months.

Ange
Yes.

Andy
And we actually really kicked in at that period. And let’s face it. Over that period if there’s gonna be an emergency or something going wrong, it always happens on Christmas day, on New Year’s Day or in that period in between. So you’ve definitely gotta make sure there’s someone around to look after your clients that you’ve been working with over the whole year. So for us, we ran a skeleton staff over this time and we just have one of our VAs, actually it was our VAs in the Philippines and they had great English, but they were answering our phone and they were looking after our tradies on the job and, um, we’d set our roster up well in advance, so we would know by October before almost middle of the year, who was doing Christmas this year.

Ange
Yeah, that’s right. We actually wrote into our contracts of employment that the business was actually closed for that week from Christmas Day, so that they knew that they were actually taking annual leave, unless, of course they were actually the one that was rostered on. So another reason, this conversation needs to come up earlier in the year about who is working so that they are actually all aware. You just touched on it actually.

Andy
Yeah. I think the big thing for us was, you know, most people get four weeks holiday a year. What we wanted to do was we wanted to stagger that for all of our tradies so people weren’t taking chunks off at the same time. So two weeks of that, four weeks a year, we’d make them have off in that January, February period. The other two weeks they could have off whenever they wanted.

Ange
So can you tell me a bit more about how you decided who is going to work that Christmas period? Cuz I can imagine no one probably wants to work. It’s summer and everyone wants to party.

Andy
Well, we’d look at it and it was almost like first people on or last people on. It was their job. So we’d look at who did it last year, we’d look at who the new people were that came into the business. Then we’d look and think, could these new people be able to run the business over this period? Were they qualified enough? And then we’d just reach out to everyone and say, listen, we’re doing the roster. We’re around about four to five months out from Christmas. Is there anyone that wants to pick the Christmas period? Because if you are, can you please speak up now? Otherwise we are gonna build a roster around who is doing it. And we had some new people come in and go, well, I, I’m not doing it. It was like, hang on. When we had our interview we even talked to you about this. So we were right onto the ball. We knew that if you were new to the business there was a good chance you’ll be working over that period.

Ange
So the who, that was working last Christmas, that person technically will not be on the roster again unless they’ve actually put their hand up and nominated themselves. Or to your point, the last person in the tradesman who’s qualified to actually, you know, do those jobs over that period, they perhaps are like the next in line.

Andy
Yeah, that’s right. And um, every business is different. Every tradie that works for you is different. We definitely did have one guy that loved working over that period. He could run his own show. There was no real stress around the business. There weren’t any offers beaming down on him. We had VAs answering calls and giving him work. He felt a lot more relaxed and he could pretty much do what he wanted. So he saw it as a bit of a holiday period, but he loved it. And, um, yeah, so we’d always make sure that he was booked in during that period.

Ange
Yeah, and I can imagine it did depend on who perhaps had leave available to even take, so for example, if someone had already accrued a massive amount of leave, like say six weeks. Then we as a business would definitely be keen for them to take those holidays because you don’t, as a business, want this leave accumulating.

Andy
Yeah. We were really good at this. As soon as any of our guys were getting over six weeks. We’ll, like, they’ve gotta have a holiday, they have to take holidays. When are you gonna do it? The last thing you want. I know you get really busy and you just need workers, but if all of a sudden you guys have got eight weeks, 10 weeks, 12 weeks, all of a sudden they wanna take it in one hit.

Ange
Yeah.

Andy
And if they do, it can be really tough, depending on the size of your business. So you don’t wanna have that huge liability around having people with heaps of holiday leave. So for me, nothing more than six weeks. But we tried to get them down to around two weeks by the end of February of each year.

Ange
So I do have one question on my mind about this. When it comes to this rostering. What happens if no one wants to work?

Andy
Yeah. Well, it has happened in the past, but we were like, well, you know, you were the last in. And that’s your role, right? So we’re pretty stern. We talked about that when they first joined. We’ve also done paper, scissors, rock with some of the guys. I mean, most of the team is okay. You know, if you have team members that are older and they’ve got a wife and kids, they sort of don’t wanna work in that period. But when you get your young up and coming, guys coming through, they’re more open to work and they would rather work in that Christmas, New Year to about the 9th of January, whatever around that period, and then take two or three weeks off at the back end of January. Yes, because that’s when most people have sort of come back home and, and they can go to Fraser Island to do all that stuff where,

Ange
keep away from the school holiday.

Andy
People just keep away from the droves of families, I suppose.

Ange
So I, I do feel like it’s a good way to go about it, you know, talking about this really early as a team that is. I think as long as you communicate with your team and make the decision early on that they’re actually gonna be okay about the outcome. So we’ve kind of covered the shutdown period. Now as business owners, we need to think about the time leading up to this. It’s not actually called the silly season for nothing. Right? And back in our day, they definitely knew how to be stupid.

Andy
Yeah, we’ve had some unbelievable parties, you know, and um, you have these Christmas parties and if you have ’em too early in December, you know, it can almost take a couple of weeks for you to recover from them. And yeah, you know, we’ve had some big parties at our house with shots flying around and finishing at three and four in the morning. And, you know, people with their head over the railings, oh, you know, looking at the ground

Ange
Head definitely hurt after that one.

Andy
Yeah, we’ve had some big ones. Can’t haven’t we? And you know, that was a hell of a lot of fun. And I, I think looking back on all that, we did some crazy, crazy stuff, but everyone loved it. But then, hello, the fun police are out and you can’t do this and you can’t do that. And it’s like, you’re doing my head in.

Ange
Well, WHS is important, right? We need to make measures as a business to ensure that everyone’s safe. So,

Andy
Yeah, I think as business owners we’ve gotta cover our ass these days and, and that’s sometimes disappointing when, you know, you think about what we’ve all been through in the past, but you know, the same odd story, nothing’s a problem until it’s a problem. So as business owners, we’ve gotta be very careful about this.

Ange
Yeah. Look, so many people would brush it off thinking, oh, but my team are all adults. They can sort themselves out. But you do need to consider these things because those boozy blowouts can actually be really dangerous. Stuff like how are they getting home? What kind of alcohol is available? What will happen in case of an emergency? Is insurance applicable here because it’s a work function? How can I manage someone on the team that gets too rowdy and how can I actually be a leader and set an example?

Andy
Wow. That’s a lot of questions, but I know, um, I was never a good leader in setting an example in those situations,

Ange
but as a business owner, you are responsible.

Andy
Oh, I know we are. But I was the one pouring the shots, giving it to the guys that let’s get him pissed, you know? And we all target people. And looking back on it, we all think it’s a hilarious spot. Oh God Jesus.

Ange
Times have changed.

Andy
We at times have definitely changed.

Ange
We did shout Ubers though, and kind of just generally kept an eye on everyone just to make sure no one was absolutely riding themselves off. Don’t you reckon?

Andy
Yeah. A couple of taxi drivers are like, there’s no way I’m taking that blow cone. These are disgraceful, have they ended up on our couch.

Ange
So that leads me to my next thought, which is work hard, play hard because whilst we had an absolute ball at our team Christmas parties, we actually expected the team to still be there and show their face on a Monday morning ready to work.

Andy
Yeah, there was a general rule of ours, you know, for the whole of December. We all know there’s a lot of social events out there and everyone wants to go out and have fun. But it’s the busiest time every year. And if everyone just goes out and goes nuts on the weekend and then they have an average Monday and an even worse Tuesday and they only start feeling good on Thursday, then they have a massive night, you know, on the Friday, like it, it’s just a vicious circle. And we all know when you drink too much alcohol, it’s all fun and games when you’re doing it, but it does knock you around a bit and change the vibe.

Ange
And I used to slur it.

Andy
Yeah. And I used to see that change in our team when they were all on it.

Ange
Yeah, look, it’s fun and games until we ask ’em for a medical certificate, right? If they like, try to chuck a stick on that Friday when we’ve actually suspected that they’ve had pretty much a bender on the weekend.

Andy
Well, the thing that really annoyed me, so not only Christmas parties, but we went to a state of origin and organized all these nights out and we’d buy tickets and food and we’d drink and have fun, and we’d get home at 12 o’clock at night. But then the boys found that as an excuse to arrive at work the next day, like half an hour late. And I like that it just doesn’t sit well with me. I’m like, I’ve just spent five grand here with you guys, and you don’t even have the common courtesy to turn up on time. So, you know, work hard, play hard, but there’s gotta be a bit of responsibility around it too, and what we expect as a business.

Ange
Yeah, look, everything we’re saying right now totally makes us sound like the fun police, but especially right now when we are having a staff shortage here in Australia, you need to ensure everyone, your entire team is on board. You cannot have people through this silly season, over months showing up late for work, or to be honest, not showing up because it literally can cost you a thousand.

Andy
I just wanna go back to these big nights too. The one thing I definitely have worked out over the years of Dr. Drip, in the early days, we were just nuts, you know? Absolutely nuts, and it was so much fun, but sometimes nothing good happens after 12, and that goes with your business as well. I mean, in my life these days, it’s more like 10, isn’t it? Nothing happens good after 10, but I used to say after 12 with our trade business because that’s when everyone’s starting to tip over the edge, and that’s when tradies get a bit masculine and then they have little fights and have a tackle. And this here, and this is when the injuries happen, and this is where before you know it, there’s punches thrown. So you gotta be really careful about this kind of stuff. And the other thing, like Ange said, you don’t want trucks off the road because if you have trucks off the road, it’s costing you thousands a day and it’s definitely not good for business. So I know there’s a hell of a lot of things to weigh up there.

Ange
So just to sum up this conversation, Christmas is just around the corner and I wanna ask you guys, the listeners, one question. What are you doing to prepare your business and your team for this period? You need to start now.

Andy
Yeah, you definitely do. And I’m gonna change it to another little topic, if you don’t mind. If you buy gifts for your customers out there, please don’t leave it until the last few days before Christmas. They’ve had a million gifts already and your gifts, just go in the corner with everyone else. You need to be one of the first. So for us in our business, Dr. Drip, the first week of December, everything was a hundred percent organized gifts for our customers. And we’d go and give it to them on the first Monday of the first week of December, and they were blown away. Why? Because we were the first company that had already been there and given Christmas gifts they tended to give us more work and they’re blown away that will So organized.

Ange
Yeah, absolutely. So lots of great tips that you guys can actually take some notes, go back and listen to and actually get yourself organized. I think that’s a wrap, Andy.

Andy
It definitely is. But get out there. Organize your business. Organize your team, have a heap of fun, but just do it in a safe and good manner.

Ange
See you soon, crew. Chat to you next week.

Andy
Hell yeah.

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