How to Navigate the Off-Season and Drive Consistent Growth [Endless Customers Podcast Ep. 61]

This transcript has been generated by AI and not checked for accuracy.

Marcus Sheridan
0:00:00
So one of the questions I asked early on was, is it possible for us to eliminate seasonality from our business? And it ends up, we did just that.

Marcus Sheridan
0:00:12
We did just that. We did just that. We did just that.

Alex Winter
0:00:29
in Hartford, Connecticut this October 14th through the 16th. Over three days, business owners, CEOs, and marketing and sales leaders will learn proven strategies to drive business growth. Attend expert-led sessions on marketing, sales, leadership, and AI, and get a chance to network with industry pros just like yourself. Discover how companies like yours are dominating their markets.

Alex Winter
0:00:53
And for all of our Endless Customers listeners, we have an exclusive discount code that'll save you a hundred bucks. So when you're on the checkout page, just enter the code ECPOD100 in all caps for a hundred dollars off. We'll see you there at Impact Live 2024 up in Hartford October 14th through the 16th. Welcome back to Endless Customers, the show that teaches you how to earn trust and win more business in the age of AI. I'm your host, Alex Winter, and today we have a very special guest, Mr. Marcus Sheridan.

Alex Winter
0:01:19
He's a keynote speaker, author, and a partner here at Impact. Marcus, welcome back to the show, my friend. All right, here we go. It's been too long. Let's make it happen. Yes, it's been too long. I'm pumped you're here. We have a great topic today, and it's an important one. We're talking about the home service industry, but specifically we're talking about the off season, the dreaded dip that tends to happen every year. And what is the best way to manage those cycles and how to stay ahead of the

Alex Winter
0:01:47
curve or try to like be ahead of those dips and what's the best way to handle it. So what's a good place to start here with the off season?

Marcus Sheridan
0:01:53
Well, let me, let me say this, right? So I started as a swimming pool company in 2001 and in Virginia, there's a significant off-season when it comes to anything that's outside like that. So I've lived this, and anything I say right now is just based on personal experience, but of course now I've worked with so many other companies.

Marcus Sheridan
0:02:15
I've got some thoughts, and we'll see if they're helpful to anybody. So one of the goals that I set early on, Alex, was I said, you know, it seems to me like right now, nobody is getting pools installed in December, in January, and parts of November, parts of February. I said, is it possible that we could eliminate much of this quote off season?

Marcus Sheridan
0:02:48
And what I found was many pool builders in Virginia,

Marcus Sheridan
0:02:53
were, they had an off season that was more based

Marcus Sheridan
0:02:57
on what sales were dictating, not as much what the weather was allowing.

Alex Winter
0:03:03
Oh, interesting.

Marcus Sheridan
0:03:04
Okay.

Alex Winter
0:03:04
And so, what happened was,

Marcus Sheridan
0:03:06
is of course we did they ask you answer. And along with that, we really incentivized homeowners to get their pool installed during the off season. Okay. And so now we've had multiple years where, and it used to be, I mean,

Marcus Sheridan
0:03:24
a lot of pool companies in Virginia too, they'll take off the entire month of December in the month of January, like take it off. Yeah. Our team gets off two weeks at the end of December. They're installing pools half of December,

Marcus Sheridan
0:03:39
and they're installing pools as soon as the clock strikes January 2nd, we are hitting the ground. Now granted, we're affected by weather sometimes. Snow, we can't get out there and get her done. Sometimes that means, too, things like, OK, we can't pour concrete patio until it warms up in February or March or whenever it is.

Marcus Sheridan
0:04:01
But the point is, we've built enough leaf flow so as to allow ourselves to install during that time. And we've incentivized homeowners to say, okay, you can come in here and sure, all right, yeah, my yard's going to be tore up during Christmas, but I've also saved a bunch of money. These guys have stayed busy and it's a win-win, right? So I would say that's a big part of this, right?

Alex Winter
0:04:36
Yeah, can I ask a question? So you had said you were like trying to book appointments for installs for the pools like during the off season. So was that like a strategic play as a business leader that you were like, we're getting all these orders in, let's stagger them out so that it fills us

Alex Winter
0:04:49
during our off season? Is that correct in saying that? Or how did you navigate that?

Marcus Sheridan
0:04:54
Well, you know, cash is king in business. And cash flow, it'll make you or break you. And I just hated early on the seasonality of installing pools. That's actually one reason, might sound like a side note,

Marcus Sheridan
0:05:09
but it does have an application to everybody's listening. That's one reason why we went aggressively towards fiberglass because if you're installing concrete pools, you're much more affected by the temperature of the air. If you're installing a vinyl liner pool, exact same problem. The older it gets, the more possible it gets to install the pool. You can't do it. Whereas a fiberglass shell can go in the ground at any point in time. If you can dig, you can install that pool. Might not be at a

Marcus Sheridan
0:05:37
pool or the patio, but you can install the pool. So it's like when you're thinking about your business, you wanna, potentially, if you think cashflow is gonna be a problem consistently during the off season, you wanna design it so as to mitigate that as much as possible.

Marcus Sheridan
0:05:52
Fiberglass allowed us to mitigate that and become a year-round business when our competitors are not a year-round business.

Alex Winter
0:06:01
Gotcha.

Marcus Sheridan
0:06:02
So this is, to me, it's quite significant. It was a really, really smart move by our company. And plus, I mean, we're big believers in fiberglass anyway for all of its other benefits. So that was nice for us, and stability is good for the homeowner, certainly good for the company. But you should be adding incentives so that they move.

Marcus Sheridan
0:06:25
And my goal wasn't to spread it out so that during the busy season we were doing less and waiting to hold them for the off season. My goal was to just go hog wild during the busy season and still have enough sales to

Alex Winter
0:06:41
carry it.

Marcus Sheridan
0:06:42
Be at least busy enough to maybe break even during those slower months like the Decembers, in the Januaries, when it's just harder to turn a profit as a company. So that's a pretty smart move. Another thing that we see with just businesses in general, when you build a brand, this is why they ask you answer and following that endless customers model is so helpful. When you build a brand, it allows you to pivot quickly and allows you to offer other services. So for example, if you're a landscaper in Cleveland,

Marcus Sheridan
0:07:20
well, you might say, geez, winter sucks, but that's when every single one of those landscapers tries to do snow removal, right? Many of them do, but what allows you to add these types of services? You got to have a brand.

Marcus Sheridan
0:07:41
When you have a brand and you have a database, let's say, you can start to offer services much faster than others so as to fill that void. This is why, going back to the age-old recommendations, brand matters, database matters, customer base matters, and your ability to have the trust with them and therefore let them know, hey, we're now offering such and such, right? And now you potentially could move product or services or whatever that thing is that you couldn't previously do.

Marcus Sheridan
0:08:19
And so there's power in the brand, it always will be, I can't stress that enough, your brand needs to become known, right? And the more known it is, the more influence you can have in other industries.

Alex Winter
0:08:30
That makes so much sense. And I'm curious too, with that, because you're right, the fundamentals stay the same. So like from a marketing and like leads perspective, what do you have to shift or like add on to like push towards those dips

Alex Winter
0:08:43
or to like have these add on services? Like hey, we're, as a landscaper, we do landscaping but we're gonna do snow removal. So like, how does that affect your marketing and the strategy overall to get more content out there and raise awareness?

Marcus Sheridan
0:08:54
Well, it's a whole bunch of different ways we could take this. One is, the smart farmer doesn't wait till they're hungry to plant the seed. And you can't do that either as a business. So the seed for you is all the marketing activity

Marcus Sheridan
0:09:11
as well as things like customer service, etc. But really the marketing activity, that's your seed. That's your seed that you use to plant the field and then you continue to nourish the crop so that when you're ready for the harvest, it's there for you and you're not trying to scramble or you're not trying to grow the crops too quickly because crops are crops, they're going to do what they do, right?

Marcus Sheridan
0:09:34
Totally. So you're not suddenly going to pivot and say, gosh, you know, things are just slow during the winter. We better, you know, we better offer this other service. No, you should have been planting the seed in the summertime that, you know, that you were doing, for example, you were tackling all the big five.

Marcus Sheridan
0:09:51
If you've read the Ask U Answer, when it comes to that potential service, you might be offering, right? So that's, that's one thing you should be doing. You leading up to it, you should be starting to notify people well in advance, hey, we've got these services and if you sign up for such and such, then we'll do this. Adding incentive matters.

Marcus Sheridan
0:10:15
I'd like to say incentive and urgency doesn't matter. People are just going to do what they do. No, it actually matters. It always makes a difference. The human brain is still the human brain. It responds to stimuli like fear of loss,

Marcus Sheridan
0:10:31
like opportunity gain, all these things, that's what it does. You also just wanna say to yourself, what are other industries doing that we could be doing? An example of this is subscription models. Subscription models, really powerful

Marcus Sheridan
0:10:46
because they help just dictate cash flow. They allow you to say, I know it's coming in because it's steady. So can you do a subscription model for snow removal? Of course you can. Absolutely. Could you do a subscription model for some other service that you could offer during

Marcus Sheridan
0:11:10
the off season? Once again, yes you can. Or could you, sometimes businesses that are extremely seasonal, they have a subscription model that allows, that spreads out payments. And so now they're getting the payment throughout the year, almost like a teacher who might be off work during the summer, which they're never really off work, but if they might be off

Marcus Sheridan
0:11:38
work during the summer, they still get paid their typical salary, right? It doesn't change for them. And so you, again, cash king as a business, you want to create that constant, predictable flow of revenue. And, uh, any type of subscription model is very helpful with that. And I think almost every industry in the world

Marcus Sheridan
0:12:04
is moving in that direction. Certainly things like pest control have moved in that direction. And you can move in that direction as well if you get creative. I don't think there's many where that it wouldn't be possible.

Marcus Sheridan
0:12:18
I mean, for most, it absolutely is possible.

Alex Winter
0:12:22
Yeah, I like the two pieces that you said. The proactivity is huge. I feel like a lot of companies go like, oh, this is our slow season, and everyone just kinda sits back in their chair and it's like to be expected,

Alex Winter
0:12:34
but if you're proactive, that's huge. And then also cash flow, that's so true. Cash flow is what affects everything. So figuring out a subscription model or some way to like have a spread of the cash flowing in versus like these huge peaks and valleys

Alex Winter
0:12:48
is gonna make a big difference. But my question for you is, when is it too late? When do you go, I might have missed the boat here, and is it ever too late to get into the saddle and try to get cash flow back and try to get some of these dips where they should be?

Alex Winter
0:13:02
Or do you need to focus on, we missed this one, but let's be proactive for the next one?

Marcus Sheridan
0:13:07
I never like to say it's, for something like this, it's too late. I mean, if somebody was looking at my swimming pool company in 2008, looking at our cast position and where we were, they would have said, it's too late. In fact, the consultants I talked to said,

Marcus Sheridan
0:13:26
it's too late, file bankruptcy. Wow. I'm glad I was hardheaded. It's either I was hardheaded or the fact that I just didn't have a plan B. And so therefore, the only option was stay the course.

Marcus Sheridan
0:13:39
It's funny, this isn't an exact example, but let me just share an example. So with at-home improvement right now, things are slower, just generally speaking, things are slower. And what used to work is working less.

Marcus Sheridan
0:13:56
I was talking with a painting company the other day. In the past they've always done traditional advertising and they've done some pay-per-click. It just wasn't really working for them very well this year. And so finally we convinced them to do Facebook advertising, which is, I mean, it's as targeted as you get, man. I mean, Facebook advertising is just wicked awesome if you do it the right way.

Marcus Sheridan
0:14:28
And they spent $5,600 on it. And in the first week, they made $60,000 in sales. And they've got some other points still to go on. They'll probably land at around $120,000. And it was like this incredible lifeline for their business. Yeah, talk about the ROI in that. That's a... Yeah, that's a huge ROI. Yeah, that's amazing.

Marcus Sheridan
0:14:52
And this is like, for them now, most of their sales have been made by this point, usually by now, because we're late in the summer. So this was a huge, this is a big moment for them. Because late in the summer, they tried something different and they had a big win by switching to Facebook advertising.

Marcus Sheridan
0:15:13
I'm seeing Facebook advertising working more and more effectively for home improvement companies. I'm starting to become a big fan because of everything that it does. You don't necessarily have to have a marketing agency do that for you. You watch a couple of YouTube videos, you can figure it out. I know it's changing all the time, but you can absolutely, if you started a business,

Marcus Sheridan
0:15:36
you could absolutely figure out how to do Facebook advertising. It could be a lifeline or at least a bridge for your business to get you through that slow time. You want to be thinking about that. When I look at today's market, just all facets of business development, all facets of marketing, all facets of advertising are changing on the daily. I mean, they really are.

Marcus Sheridan
0:15:57
Part of that's because algorithms are changing all the time. Some of these tools get better, some of these tools get worse. Just because Facebook is great today for home service doesn't mean that it's necessarily going to be great in like six months. I can't say that. It's no different than AI tools are changing every single day.

Marcus Sheridan
0:16:18
When we started in November 2021, ChatGPT was by far the best writing tool. You know, today, as we record this, Claude 3-5 Sonnet is a much better riding tool. Totally. That's not going to be the case in the future. They're going to leapfrog each other and it's just going to continue to be a battle. Right. So you got to be really open to change. Got to be willing to pivot quickly. I would say don't give up on yourself, though. And don't forget to that sometimes you just got to do some really hardcore like traditional selling which is picking up the dank phone and offering your services to someone

Marcus Sheridan
0:16:55
it still works literally. Yeah it still works. That still actually works and often times people hide behind email and they wonder why they're not closing more deals pick up the phone go meet with the person go meet with the group right there's there's a ton of value in that. And even though a lot of people know me as a digital guy,

Marcus Sheridan
0:17:17
what I am is a connection guy. And if you can connect the deepest and win more trust by being with them in person, well send it. Especially if your path position is such that you need to think quick and you need quick results.

Alex Winter
0:17:31
Right, no that's extremely well said. And the digital piece, even though you're known for that and it's worked really well for you and for your pool company. It's just a tool in your tool belt to ultimately make those connections, build trust and have the relationships you want to have to bring those leads in. And I think that's a huge point to make. So it's never too late.

Alex Winter
0:17:49
Everyone out there watching and listening, it's never too late. How about for people that maybe are in like California or Nevada or places where like the weather doesn't really affect some of these dips, but they're still having these dips happening. What would you say for people that are in those types of geographic ranges?

Marcus Sheridan
0:18:06
Yeah, I mean, first of all, I would say lucky you. But what's funny is in home improvement, home improvement, almost all home improvement is seasonal around the country when it comes to interest levels. Okay.

Marcus Sheridan
0:18:22
Let me give you an example. You take Arizona, okay? For swimming pools, 75% of leads for the year on average come from 3 months of that year. April, May, June. April, May, June. That's in Arizona.

Marcus Sheridan
0:18:41
That's a desert, y'all. You know what I'm saying? they oftentimes still have some of the seasonality of sales. You know, what's funny is you look at hot tubs. With hot tubs, they sell the best, those exact same munch that I just mentioned,

Marcus Sheridan
0:19:02
April, May, June. But yet, they're the funnest to use, in my opinion, in November and December and January.

Alex Winter
0:19:15
Totally, when it's cold. Yeah, me too. That's my favorite time to be in the hot tub.

Marcus Sheridan
0:19:19
Yeah, it doesn't make a lot of sense. So this is why, getting back to the farmer analogy, you just have to always be planting. If you look at like a great farmer, generally they're rotating their fields, they're rotating their crops.

Marcus Sheridan
0:19:35
If you do the same crop in the same field for too long, it becomes stagnant and it doesn't continue to produce That's why you've got to rotate crops. All right, and you know if you're if you're if you're doing it, right you're like, okay We've got corn this season. We got barley this season and you just once again, you're just thinking by Farmers are always thinking about how can I eliminate the seasonality? Businesses want to try to do that as well as possible also, right? It's hard to keep great employees

Marcus Sheridan
0:20:05
if they're not year round.

Marcus Sheridan
0:20:06
Anybody that's seasonal understands this. That's why like restaurants that are super seasonal, it's brutal for them and just absolutely brutal for them. So true. And so you just need to figure out whatever it takes to keep somebody year round, generally,

Marcus Sheridan
0:20:22
especially with the market today, especially with the fact that teenagers are working less than they've ever worked before because their parents don't really expect them to have jobs. Generally speaking here, I'm not saying you personally, but generally that market has changed.

Marcus Sheridan
0:20:40
It used to be that the companies that needed someone for seasonality, especially like summer jobs, they would count on teenagers. You don't see that anymore. You can't count on the teenagers anymore. I mean, you know, a huge portion of society has not had a job by the time they enter university, which to me is appalling, but that's not the subject of today's podcast.

Alex Winter
0:21:01
No it's not, but I would agree with you. My first job, I was 14, I think, and I wanted to work when I was that age. I was excited to get out and learn and get my hands dirty, you know. But that's, generationally that shifts, and depending on what generation you're in like that There's always trends like that that tend to tend to shift and especially with technology where it's at But so there there seems to be to like and I might be making this up

Alex Winter
0:21:25
But in my head, I feel like there's times in off seasons for home service companies where they're like, this is the offseason Let's do like a 70% off flash sale like by good like Does that mentality work from a marketing standpoint to like? Oh if we're going into a dip, let's like give crazy discounts and like do anything we can to bring people in. Is that a smart play or is there a way to do it?

Marcus Sheridan
0:21:46
If it's rooted in psychology, yes. Okay. Yes, it works. Every single November, we send out an email to our list of leads for the previous couple of years, okay, for our pool company. And essentially we say, it's the slow time of year,

Marcus Sheridan
0:22:09
and that's a benefit to you. You may still be in the game. If you're in the game, don't wait till fall and prices are at the top, excuse me, spring. Get it now in the fall, right? When prices are at their bottom

Marcus Sheridan
0:22:25
and we need to offer incentives to help people like you move and allow us to install this during the off season. So that absolutely works still. Yes. But you've got, it's got to be rude in psychology, which again, all times happens with FOMO, that fear of missing out.

Marcus Sheridan
0:22:47
But every time I send that email out, I'm always shocked at how many responses we get. Even our sales team is like, I was sure this person was out. I was sure this person was like no longer interested. And lo and behold, they've been resurrected, right?

Marcus Sheridan
0:23:02
So I think that that off season, and I would recommend that you have, you know, like a specific cadence for that as well, because it's certainly helpful.

Alex Winter
0:23:12
Yeah, no, it's true. And I think there are deal seekers out there and people would be in the market to buy a product, but they're waiting for that moment. My wife's like that. She's a savvy shopper, as we say. She's always waiting for the deal. She's like, never buy anything full price. But that also depends on seasonality and different factors. So, very interesting. I'm curious too. So you gave an example earlier about Facebook doing

Alex Winter
0:23:33
paid ads, which we know can really work well. Do you have any other examples of clients you've been working with or people you've been speaking with? Because I know you're traveling a lot, you're speaking a ton in front of a lot of businesses where maybe people have been suffering from what we're talking about and they've figured out how to overcome these off-season obstacles.

Marcus Sheridan
0:23:51
Well, I mean, one that might sound self-serving, it's not. I mean, I have this amazing story. For those that haven't been paying attention, I developed a really incredibly simple pricing calculator that you can put on your website. It's called priceguide.ai. I got an email literally this week.

Marcus Sheridan
0:24:16
It came on Monday. There was a shed manufacturer that put on Friday, they put this calculator on their website. Now keep in mind, they've been doing the ask you answer, the shed company, they've been doing the ask you answer, yet they put this pricing calculator on their website and lo and behold, they got 20 plus leads over the weekend.

Marcus Sheridan
0:24:42
In a week? 20 plus leads. In a weekend?

Marcus Sheridan
0:24:44
In a weekend. Wow.

Marcus Sheridan
0:24:45
20 plus leads. Wow. And we're going, now, summer's over, so we're now starting to go into the off season. Yet, they got 20 plus leads. It goes back to the core pillars of trust within those customers.

Marcus Sheridan
0:25:04
You gotta be willing to talk about what others aren't willing to talk about, show what others aren't willing to show, sell in a way others aren't willing to sell, and be more human along the way. Those are the four pillars.

Marcus Sheridan
0:25:16
What are they doing there with that calculator? They're definitely talking about showing and selling in a very different way than anybody else in their space. They're enabling just like immediate gratification with the buyer. Because of that, they're getting huge lead flow. Since it's been out now, because I got another update from them today.

Marcus Sheridan
0:25:39
They're averaging 10 leads a day and in the last, since it's been up, which is almost a week, they've had two walk-ins alone of people that did the calculator and bought on the spot.

Alex Winter
0:25:50
Wow, that's amazing.

Marcus Sheridan
0:25:51
They were doing the Ask You Answer. They were doing it already. That's bonkers.

Alex Winter
0:25:57
Yeah, just got to lean into it more.

Marcus Sheridan
0:25:59
I'm like, why am I beating this drum? Because I don't want you to go hungry. And I hate seeing businesses struggle, right? And so I've been there, I've looked over the precipice and all self-service tools. Another one is Score app.

Marcus Sheridan
0:26:17
I'm super hot on Score app right now. I love that for offering assessments. It's a great tool, it's a cheap tool. My friend Daniel Priest over there, he's got something great. If you did Score app and Price Guide as a service-based business especially, you would be seeing leads like you haven't seen in a long time.

Alex Winter
0:26:42
Very cool. Thanks for dropping some of those tools. I have to check that out too because I haven't messed with that one yet. So definitely when we get off the show, I'm definitely going to go take a look at that one. But it also sounds like, and this is something that you're really good at and you're known for, there's like a mentality shift, right?

Alex Winter
0:26:57
You had this fire. In 2008, there was a problem. Your consultants were like, you should just claim bankruptcy, and you were like, no, I'm going to figure out how to do this. I'm going to power through. How can other business owners and leaders that are kind of comfortable and like, oh,

Alex Winter
0:27:10
this is the dip and this is just the normal cycle of things, how do they get into the mindset of being like, no, I'm not accepting this. This doesn't have to be a dip. I want to really put my foot on the gas and keep going. Because I feel like that's a big piece, is getting in the right head space.

Alex Winter
0:27:24
It comes from the top down. It's like the leadership, the leadership and the leadership team has to start there and have it trickle down through the whole organization so people start to feel it and get pumped up and are tracking in the same direction.

Alex Winter
0:27:36
This is probably one of the hardest to overcome.

Marcus Sheridan
0:27:39
Like this is actually very, very difficult. There's this thing called the pride cycle, which affects every human, every company, every society. Imagine a circle and at the top of the circle, you have success

Marcus Sheridan
0:28:04
Prosperity at the bottom of the circle you have pain frustration, right Oftentimes when we're at the top Let's start the bottom oftentimes when we're at the bottom of the circle We're experiencing pain frustration We're not financially well, physically well, whatever that thing is.

Marcus Sheridan
0:28:29
We say, I'm disgusted. I'm going to make changes. We start to do things. Do things that we otherwise wouldn't have done. We're doing them because we're feeling pain. So we're relating more discomfort to our life continuing the way that it is than to the

Marcus Sheridan
0:28:47
discomfort of doing the new thing that we haven't done before.

Alex Winter
0:28:51
Okay?

Marcus Sheridan
0:28:52
And so because we start to do that,

Marcus Sheridan
0:28:55
those little things,

Marcus Sheridan
0:28:56
and that could be making the extra call, that could be knocking the extra door, sending the flyer, whatever the thing is. Because we do the little things, now we're on the left side of the circle, moving our way back up,

Marcus Sheridan
0:29:08
we start to experience success, more and more of it, until once again we reach prosperity and success. But then what happens? What happens is, because you're in a place of prosperity and success, you start to not do those little things again.

Marcus Sheridan
0:29:32
You forget about the call. You forget about the knocking of the door. Maybe you don't do that training meeting that you should have been doing. And then you start to slide down the right side of the circle.

Marcus Sheridan
0:29:45
And you're sliding down because you're not doing the little things. Suddenly, you find yourself at the bottom again with pain, discomfort, financial frustration. That's called the pride cycle. I said awesome.

Marcus Sheridan
0:29:59
That's called the pride cycle and it continues again and again and again, right? And you see entire countries and civilizations have risen and fallen because of the pride cycle.

Alex Winter
0:30:14
I was just going to say that. Yeah, it's not just business. This is like a psychological, like this is, this happens to empires and to leaders and all that stuff.

Marcus Sheridan
0:30:21
Yeah. It happens with my fat belly, Alex, right? You know, I eat too much during Thanksgiving, I step on the scales, I get annoyed, I do the work to lose it, and you know, I fluctuate. Me, five pounds is a lot, so I get funny about five pounds. But you know, some people, whatever.

Marcus Sheridan
0:30:37
But that's how we all do it. And it takes that moment of disgust, and in the case of the little things is, not eating that extra snack, not getting that extra plate, right? That's how it works. That's how it works.

Alex Winter
0:30:49
So true. Yeah, very well said. So just to wrap everything up that we talked about here, and I've been doing this, I've been really trying to channel this, and this is your thing, and I love, out of the whole book of They Ask, We Answer, this is one of my favorite things, is the one thing. So what is the one thing for people listening right now that they need to take in consideration,

Alex Winter
0:31:10
or like the most important thing we discussed for like making sure in these dips or in these slow seasons, you're doing everything you can to stay ahead of it.

Marcus Sheridan
0:31:18
I would say the most important thing of what we've talked about

Marcus Sheridan
0:31:22
is you have to think like the farmer. You have to see ahead, anticipate, and plant the seed accordingly. Otherwise you will be hungry. And that's the difference between the companies that offset seasonality versus the ones that do not.

Marcus Sheridan
0:31:51
Well said.

Alex Winter
0:31:52
Well said. Marcus, thank you so much for your time and for being on the show and providing your insights. We really appreciate it. My pleasure. All right. And for everybody out there watching and listening, this is Endless Customers.

Alex Winter
0:32:02
I'm your host, Alex Winter. See you on the next episode. See you on the next episode.

Marcus Sheridan
0:32:04
watching and listening. This is Endless Customers. I'm your host Alex Winter. See you on the next episode.