It’s inevitable—every year the holiday season brings out every possible emotion. It’s everything from super enthralled and grateful and the spirit of giving and all the warm fuzzies… alongside overwhelm and frustration and feeling like there’s never enough time.

This constant up and down is one of the reasons the holidays can be so exhausting and why we find them so stressful. In addition to all of that it’s also the time to close out the current year and make sure everything you have coming up in the next year is in alignment. The pressure of January honestly starts in December.

If you’re anything like me, you’re thinking it’s a brand new year and you want to start it off right. You’re probably obsessing about all the things you’re trying to accomplish when the reality is that it’s just the next month. But something about the transition from December 31st to January 1st hits me super hard every year.

I always want to make sure that every goal has been checked off, every I has been dotted, and every t has been crossed. Of course it hasn’t… because human, and I just have to remind myself to accept that. Am I the only one who feels the immense pressure of closing out the year and starting a new one?

This whole season is such a hodge podge of emotions, but it’s been happening long enough now that I’m used to it. It all starts creeping in around Thanksgiving. My studio usually has 5 days off for Thanksgiving because work/life balance is so important to me, but I typically spend most of that time planning out December.

December is typically the salon’s busiest month and we’re always kicking off and launching things in January. A lot of what I’ve learned as a business owner is that your prep game has to be so strong. The videos that I want to release in January I’m having to find time to record in December. The campaign I want to launch in January has to be put together in December. The gift card promotion we launched for December had to be decided in October. It’s all about being prepared!

On the flip side of all of the stress and prepping there’s a whole dose of excitement as well. 2020 is going to be such a big year for my studio. Our national education launches in January—more about that in next week’s blog post—and we are ecstatic for what’s to come.

It’s such a mix of emotions, but I wouldn’t give it up for the world. Do the holidays bring you stress or excitement or a good mix of both?