I can’t flip through the television channels without seeing snow falling and hearing jingle bells in commercials. And when I ordered my latte at Starbucks just days after Halloween, the barista handed me a bright red cup. It’s madness! But it’s life.

Yes, the “Christmas creep” is real, and that means that the season will become stressful for your employees even earlier this year. Holidays are taxing for everyone, particularly those whose business picks up exponentially around the holiday season.

We all know that a business with happy employees just plainly does better — and during the holidays, the key to their happiness is showing them how much you appreciate what they’re doing.

Here are four tips on how to be better to your employees.

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It’s no secret that the holiday season is a make-or-break time for retailers. From Black Friday and Cyber Monday to the beginning of the new year, they salivate over those coveted holiday shopping dollars, doing everything they can — advertising, marketing, promotions, incentives and more — to draw people in.

But it’s not just retailers that should be clamoring for new customers at this time. Every small business should be thinking about how to attract new customers during the holidays to start the New Year off right. (Regardless of whether we have a White Christmas, we all need to stay in the black!)

Here are a few ways to increase your chances at an influx of new customers.

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After five bloody, drug-addled, morally foggy seasons, AMC’s series Breaking Bad has drawn to a close. Here at Restaurant.com, Walter White not only showed us how far an ordinary man is willing to go to protect his family — or, you know, his pride and money — but he also gave us some great pointers on how to run a business.

Walt ruled his drug domain with an iron fist, menacing and (spoilers!) eventually murdering his way to the top, but there could be lessons about influencing customer behavior from Breaking Bad that go beyond the New Mexico desert, beyond the drug trade and right into your own back office.

Here are a few of those lessons.

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The holiday season is hurtling toward us. (Did you hear Kmart recently aired its first Christmas ad, not just before Thanksgiving but more than a month before Halloween?

As retailers, it’s easy to get caught up in the ordering and stocking, ensuring you have the hottest products in your market to prepare for the holiday shopping rush. But it’s just as important — or maybe even more so — to prepare your customer service department for everything that might come their way from Black Friday through the New Year.

Here are four ways to get your customer service staff ready for the holidays — so your customers are left feeling merry and bright about your business.

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Yes, it’s already time to start thinking about the holidays. (Though if you’re like many business owners, you probably haven’t stopped thinking about last holiday season yet!)

It’s an exciting time, often the busiest and most profitable time of the year, but it’s also one where tensions run high. If you’re in retail or the service industry, you may even need to be thinking about hiring seasonal workers who will need to be trained and brought up to speed before the rush sets in.

Don’t forget your existing employees in preparing for the holidays! You need them to be successful. Here are some ways to get your team running smoothly before the holiday rush.

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