As far as holiday’s go, I’m pretty much a scrooge. I only like birthdays. It’s so bad that I still have unopened Christmas presents from 2015.
I’m gonna check those out, but it is July, so I’ll give you some wintery-Christmas cheer because… well there won’t be any from me come Holiday season.
Really though, I say this because I wish I had Santa Claus as a partner. We’d have fun crafting emails.
I’m sure he’s tired of being ignored throughout the year, and he’s concerned Christmas isn’t enough to keep people tuned into him. He is worried about being forgotten… even though he’s been giving away his best gifts for free every year like he’s used to doing.
So here’s what I would do for Santa today to have him prepped to enjoy Christmas 2016:
1. Start sending daily emails!
Writing regularly to his audience of families that actually believe in his magic. They want to hear from him in the off-season that way they can’t possibly forget him since he’s in the inbox every day.
It’ll definitely make it harder for them to forget to be nice and charitable too.
2. Stop talking about Santa, talk about US!
Talk about the families you serve.
Share their letters and how much they remind you about what makes humanity special.
Talk about ways to stay on the nice list, and even help our naughty friends get on it too.
People want to hear him answer all those questions they asked in our letters. Why they got one gift, but not the one we begged for?
If he needs story advice, he should sign up for my Strategy Session:
3. Write an email series that doubles as a virtual hug.
We ALL could use a hug right now from a leader we admire.
I’d tell him this is NOT based on “finding your why”.
It’s based on living up to the promise you have to help people with your jovial cheer.
We can even do this with an indoctrination sequence that sets the tone for living life well with their new inbox friend, Santa.
Once we have that, your messages will definitely resonate with any reader that comes your way, while making their life enjoyable so they want to read whatever you send next
4. Start collecting your stories!
In other words…
Instead of moments fading into memories, write them down and store them in a master list on a cloud service like Google Drive, Evernote, or others.
You have so many stories to tell that can teach important lessons so that we remember and are more likely to act on them.
Hitching up the reindeer team to go to the store or run errands, turns into an email about planning, organization, focusing on a goal, or a fun laugh about how things don’t always go our way.
Look back at your work over the past century, and stop feeling sorry for himself or afraid of the future.
Your past is proud and still relevant. Use it and share it with us so we connect to where you were before. Remind the world, why you’re important every day, not just for one eight-hour night a year.
Save these stories so that in an instant you can look them up and begin to write a wonderful message for your list.
5. Teach your employees to write emails.
Let’s be real.
All those elves have extraordinary stories to tell from their very unique, insider perspective.
By beefing up their responsibilities, you write less, they write more, and you’re churning out regular stories daily.
This means you’ll get more involved in your own content creation too. Making sure it’s in the write brand voice. The extra work will do you good, bring the team together, and make you a more mindful leader.
Maybe even trim some weight since you’re more actively living to discover more stories in your everyday life.
Sooo… I guess this was more about You and not Santa (he doesn’t respond to my letters).
With my system it doesn’t matter who is the leader, Santa or you. It’s about how you connect and why you do it, and how it helps you live up to the promise you made to do whatever it takes to help the people you serve.
This is the plan I have for Santa: https://knoxuniversity.com/
We’ll see if he calls me up this summer.
In the meantime, you have right now to start the process.
Let’s jam with July Christmas fun.
Be well,
Max!