Excuse Free … BOSS Status!

How about we start being excuse free? 

You don't even know what that looks like, do you? Because you’re always making excuses for something … Oh wait, you don’t call them excuses, you just have all these “reasons” why it has to be this way.

Right now, I want to talk about excuses, but in a way that will help you get ready for this holiday season. I mean, Black Friday ads and sales are coming, and the holidays are coming as well. 

You think that you can’t get holiday ready without spending all this money, running around and scrambling for everything, overcomplicating it, and making you stressed out? WRONG!

What if I show you how to get to BOSS status, and help you let go of the excuses that come up when it comes to planning and getting organized? 

Well, if that’s what you want, just keep reading. And if you aren’t sure if that’s what you want, knowledge is power, so keep reading on so you can learn about it and see how you can apply it for not just this holiday season, the holiday seasons to come, but also when it comes to birthday shopping or even vacation shopping. 

How about we just change the way you shop as a whole?

Oh, now you’re in … Let’s do this then!

BOSS Status?

You want to achieve this BOSS status, but you aren’t even sure what it means to be a BOSS? Well, in this case, BOSS stands for budget friendly, organized, simple, and stress free.

Does that sound anything like your current shopping plan and regime? Well, if that’s what you’re wanting to create and just experience, let me help you get organized here. 

As always, if you want more of the customized approach of how this would look and apply to your life, you know that you can book a call and we can talk about that. If you want me to help you get holiday ready so you can take these Black Friday ads by storm, let’s do this!

As I’m sure that you know, and have seen, the ads have already started dropping, and the sales have already started, which is why it’s important to not only read but take action on what you find here, so you can achieve that BOSS status! At this point, I’m not even sure why they still call it Black Friday ads and sales when you can buy it two weeks in advance, but hey, it’s marketing. 

Why Plan?

Well, the obvious answer is so that you can achieve that BOSS status and can make the changes necessary to not continue to progress in the way that you have been. 

But, the deeper reason looks at how planning, getting organized, and setting yourself for success looks like for you. It’s looking at the excuse that you give yourself that allows you to stay disorganized, unorganized, and stressed out because of these excuses. Well, it's time to stop allowing those excuses to keep you from getting to a place where you can be organized and ultimately infuse that into every area of your life so that you can live the life that you want.

Let’s take the holidays out of this for a moment. How has not planning affected you in life in general? You’ve been reading these blogs, following me, engaging on my content, and slowly starting to apply it to your life. So, you understand that what you’ve been doing hasn’t been working and you need to make some changes. 

So, why plan? Because not planning hasn’t been serving you well and hasn't been helping you to get the results that you want. Let’s try something different, instead of living with insanity and continuing to do the same things over and over and expecting different results.

If only you're willing to let go of the excuses and instead put a plan in place to get yourself organized, so that you can in fact get things done and do the things that you've been putting off for so long, including getting holiday ready. The funny thing is that the same people who are so ready for Halloween to pass so they can start decorating for Christmas are often the ones who are so last minute when it comes to holiday shopping as a whole. 

So, if you're ready to do that … If you're ready to let go of the excuses, free yourself from those excuses, let the disorganization go, and have some structure and plans with getting organized and being stressed free because of it, let's get into it.

B: Budget Friendly

First of all, can we stop trying to keep up with the Joneses and stop trying to impress the next person?!? That’s the first problem with sticking to a budget. You're so busy trying to impress that it has you living outside of your means. 

Actually, the first problem is that you don’t have a budget. 

Now, I’ll be honest out of the gate on this one, if you haven’t started saving and doing this before reading this blog, it might be a little hard to recover from this, but you can learn for next year! 

What you can do though, is the first thing I said, not try to impress the next person which can help you at least stay somewhat in budget for this year. You have to have a budget and know your budget, in order to stay on budget. So, you can stay on budget, you just have to set one, now where the money for the budget comes from is a different story.

One thing you can do is use your credit cards, now I’m in no way advocating going into debt for holiday shopping, but if you’re going to buy it anyways and you can earn points or even get cash back for the purchases, I mean you might as well get more bang for your buck!

But, to go ahead and start planning for next year, you can open up a holiday savings account where each month you deposit money into that account so that at the end of the year you have your holiday shopping money already set aside. 

Think about it, stores are generally banking on your laziness and your last minute shopping, for them it pays because they get more money from you - Whether that be because of paying extra for shipping, paying full price for items, or just the gas that you’re spending driving around to different stores to make sure you get the item in time. 

Let’s go ahead and beat the system this year and win in the end. And, for the things that might be a little too late in the budget friendly department, let’s go ahead and plan ahead and get a jump on next year!  

The other tips that go into BOSS status will show you how being more organized and simplifying the process can be helpful to your budget too!

O: Organized

Now you know I’m all about productivity which means that you have to be organized in order to really be productive, and that’s no different here with planning for and doing your holiday shopping.

So, how can you get organized to be holiday ready? To start with, you need to get a list together of the people that you’re shopping for, so you need to get ahead and request those wish lists, and we talked about the budget before.

Now, when you’re requesting these lists, you need to give them a deadline. My Christmas lists are slowly rolling in from the family that I’m buying gifts for, but it’s very much a slow roll. You would think that as these kids get older it’s easier to get a list from them, but honestly, it’s getting harder. And let’s not ever talk about the actual adults, but I digress. That's a me problem and hopefully you don’t have the same problem in requesting your lists! But, give them a deadline, either way, so that you can get the ball rolling on the final steps in this BOSS status shopping plan..

Now, when it comes to making the list, this is where your creative freedom comes in. You can decide if you want a paper list, an electronic list, or even an Excel spreadsheet. You know yourself and what type of list person you are … And this isn’t the time to say you aren’t a list person. But, if you insist on saying it, let’s keep it simple with pen and paper here! But, if you’re more advanced, go digital and if you’re super advanced, make an Excel sheet with formulas if you want!

Now, the main parts that you want to make sure that you have on the list is the person the gift is for, the gift options that you’re considering for them, and a spot to note when you’ve ordered the gift. Some additional things that you might want to consider are where you’re getting the gift from, has the gift come in, if you need to ship the gift back off. If you go digital, you can even have a place to put a link for the gift or the shipping/tracking information.

S: Simplified

Now, the list that you made before that helped you get organized is also going to help with the simplification of the shopping process. 

Remember those bonus boxes I said to add? If you added them, then great, they'll help. But, if you didn't, after reading this you might reconsider. I’m not telling you how to do this, remember, it’s about what works for you.

Knowing what you want to get and who you're shopping for on your shopping list is about doing the research to know what you’re getting, from where, and using that shopping list that you made.

The simplification of the shopping process is about knowing where you’re getting items from so that you can plan and be strategic about your shopping. 

Thinking about if you're buying online, buying in store, or getting custom made from somewhere is important. 

If you’re ordering something from a store that you’re going to in person, why go to that same store several times because you forgot that you needed another gift from there? Why order from this online store and pay for shipping and then have to turn around an order from there again? Why pay the same price for items that are all in one location, but you’re ordering from three or more different places?

Simplify this process through your organizational skills.

S: Stress Free 

Now, this whole BOSS status process culminates here. All the work that you’ve put up until this point was to get you to this point, to make sure that your holiday shopping was stress free! 

Look at you, you’ve almost made it to the end of this holiday shopping experience!

All that is really left is for you to make sure all the orders have come in, they are what you ordered, and then you can get to wrapping and truly enjoy the holiday season!

The reason that you have gotten stressed out from the holiday’s in the past, because that’s no longer your portion and no longer what you’ll experience, is because you didn’t know what to buy. This caused you to just buy anything and everything and overspend, because you had no structure or plans for the holiday shopping, which caused you to be running around and ordering from everywhere.

But no, we aren’t stressed anymore!  

You’re a BOSS

If you use what you’ve learned here in this blog, then you have officially achieved BOSS status and are in fact ready to be a BOSS this holiday season with your holiday sales.

Black Friday ads and sales have nothing on you! You’re ready!

I know that I’m going to finish my list out in the coming days, with the goal being that all my gifts will have been ordered by the end of this month. For me, December is just waiting for the gifts to come in and wrapping, it’s not shopping for me. Now to get my house Christmas ready with my tree and decorations!

Let me know below when you plan on having all your gifts purchased or ordered by below!

Now, if you’re ready to take this holiday season BOSS status mentality and apply it to other areas of your life, we are six weeks away from the new year! Let’s finish this year strong and lay the groundwork for the level up. Let's get on a call to see just how we can work together to do that!

Now, go be a BOSS ... 

~Coach Lee 

Your Productivity & Accountability Coach