How to See Where Your Business is Really Trending

Brandon Welch 0:00
And try to avoid the, I guess, emotional assumption that something’s wrong. There’s a lot of people thought they were growing because of their excellence a couple years ago, and it really was just they were riding a wave, and they spent money like they were entitled to spend money, and they maybe made moves they shouldn’t have made in their in their business or in their personal income. And now they’re going, now they’re crying the blues. And so know if you’re riding a trend, or know if it’s actually because of some sort of dependable, sustainable thing that you’re doing.

Welcome to the Maven Marketing Podcast. Today is Maven Monday. I’m Brandon Welch. I’m joined today by Caleb thermal shirt, or ergy ERG energy.

Caleb Agee 0:38
You can call me whatever.

Brandon Welch 0:40
You know what? That’s a nice thermal shirt, though. Yeah, wear it well, I like warm. It’s that kind of a day here. It’s

Caleb Agee 0:44
a little bit chilly around here.

Brandon Welch 0:45
This is the place where we answer your real life marketing questions so you can eliminate waste in advertising, grow your business and achieve the big dream. And Hey, speaking of big dreams, yeah, big congratulations to our buddy, Raj from North Carolina. He won a signed copy hard cover. Oh, newly.

Caleb Agee 1:04
It’s fresh. It’s fresh. It smells fresh. It looks fresh. Smells

Brandon Welch 1:07
like marketing wisdom smells smells like wisdom was like profit, uh, signed copy, the Maven marketer and the mystery gift is not a mystery anymore. An OG Frank and Maven mug. Oh, yeah, these are in limited supply. Yes, they are. These are rare.

Caleb Agee 1:24
These are the heavy duty. I don’t know if you can see the thickness on this, but they are heavy. If you’re listening to podcasts, you definitely can’t see the thickness of the mug, but it probably weighs five pounds by itself somehow. So I

Brandon Welch 1:35
was at a random fly in resort, like a fly fishing resort, but like this cool little cabin place you fly into remotely in Arkansas. And I found these mugs, like, 10 years ago, and I thought they were the coolest things. And it took me, like, a whole year to track down who made them. And then I had a run done for Frank and Maven, and they’ve been, like, the biggest hit. Yeah, I got a text yesterday from somebody who got theirs like, nine years ago, still using it, still using it. It’s amazing. So you’re gonna get one of those Raj and you might get, like, you know, a pen and a T shirt. Yeah, some other cool Goody goods. So, yeah, hey, what are we talking about today? Hey, some

Caleb Agee 2:09
companies are feeling like things are going great, and others may feel like things are a little bit down. And the key word in that sentence is, feel, feel. So what we are going to try to do here this morning is help you make decisions, but base them on the truth, on the facts, and look at some frameworks that we use to help diagnose where, where the reality is in your trend up or down.

Brandon Welch 2:39
When somebody thinks, oh, we better get with a new marketing company, or we better focus on marketing, usually they’re they’re trying to, like, change a trend in something so yes, instead of jumping on to the chaos wheel, we’ve called it over the years, like, and just saying, going right along with that. You know, intelligent business owners like view of the world. We’ve learned that sometimes, while they’re very skilled at what they do, they need some guided processes to, like, really diagnose what the numbers mean, what the numbers actually are. In some cases, because entrepreneurs are an emotional bunch, they that rocket fuel that drives them is also the rocket fuel that destroys them if they don’t focus in the right area. So we’re gonna give you some frameworks today. This is something we do quarterly and annually for our partner clients and anybody who comes in our door. This is literally where it starts. It’s not just, Oh, I wanna grow. It’s like, no, what’s reasonable? What’s are you growing? What’s possible in your industry, like, what are the factors behind what you’ve been doing? And so we have three parts one is looking at the numbers that matter. Part two is finding out why the numbers are the way they are. And part three is what to do about them. We’re gonna cram that all in 45 minutes. We’re gonna do

Caleb Agee 3:56
it. You ready or less? You ready to go? Let’s go number one. Part One, look at the numbers that matter. So sub point one, the first thing we’re gonna do when looking at the numbers that matter, we’re gonna say month over month is rarely a good comparison. Yes, it is very easy for business owner to say, hey, things are looking up or things are looking down. And usually that is a feeling, again, feeling based on last week or last month. And the the big thing we want to look at is seasonality and trends of your business and the truth behind the numbers there,

Brandon Welch 4:32
certainly if your business is less than five years old, this is a this is a thing you just you. Sometimes your literal cash flow is tied to your lifestyle. Sometimes it’s tied to your ability to, you know, pay the vendors payroll, or do payroll or whatever. And so when, when you’re when you don’t have this maturity, you know, of somebody who’s got a pile of cash or has been through, you know, every shape and size of problem in business, it’s very easy to be emotional about what’s happening in the last 3060, 90 days. Yeah. But. We want to raise our eyebrows at any major trends, but usually these are, these are single digit ups or downs, and they’re usually driven by things that aren’t actually hardwired to the business as destiny

Caleb Agee 5:12
or maybe happen every year. You just don’t realize it. Which leads us to number two is look at year over year or multiple years. If you if you’ve been in business for 510, 15 years, what we’re going to look at is seasonality, month over month, quarter after quarter, and we’re going to compare kind of the trend. Because, yeah, people, I don’t know if you knew this, but people are predictable. People

Brandon Welch 5:38
are very predictable creatures. They do very similar. They want to go outside in the summer. Yep, they want to come inside in the winter. Mm, hmm. They want to buy long sleeve clothes and fall and it’s cold. Yeah, they want to buy cars, typically, in the in the spring and summer. Yep, they want to sell toys and boats in the winter, when they’re, you know, sitting there doing nothing for him. And so guess what? Air Conditioners seldom break in the middle of the winter. Crazy. And that crazy never would have guessed. Roofs never leak when it’s not raining, raining, yeah? So, so there’s, there’s some seasonality. And while you’re going like, yeah, duh. But seriously, we hear it every single week from somebody that’s like, what’s going on? And it’s like, Well, step one always like the as as if we’re taking a call or if we’re on an initial prospect, we’re like, literally already navigating to year over year traffic. Now, if you’re a frank and Maven partner client, we’re way ahead of this for you, like, we’re doing this actively, and we’re seeing the trend probably before you, you know, bring it up sometimes, but like, that’s literally where I would go. It’s like, I want to look at year over year, numbers, year over year, traffic, year over year, profit, year over year, other factors, which is point number three, which is, don’t just look at the revenue. Don’t just look at the revenue. Sometimes revenue is a really bad indicator, because not to skip ahead, but number four, maybe you’ll have a really big outlier, like last year you had a, you know, multiple six figure sale, some deal of the year type thing that happened, and you just didn’t have that this year. So we’re looking at number of transactions just as equally as we do top line revenue, because it could be a it could be a diagnosis of poor salesmanship, or changing market trends, or sometimes just inflation alone, will either, you know, make your numbers look bigger than they were last year, but your profits less? Yeah, there’s a lot of factors that don’t just, you know, make revenue the ultimate thing. So yeah, if we can, we’re looking at net profit. If we can, we’re definitely looking at transaction numbers, the average ticket price. Yeah, did that go up or down? And then is your sales closing ratio to blame for that, or is it truly a marker of intent? Yeah.

Caleb Agee 7:58
And so what you want to do when you feel you’re like, hey, things are going great, or things are not so great. What you want to do is force yourself to get out of the emotional mode that you’re in right in that moment and stop and look at, why am I feeling this, and what, How soon did this trend happen? And you’re going to look back at maybe August and September of this year, because you’re feeling a change between those those two months and October is is over now. So we’re looking at August, September and October, and what you want to do is say, Okay, from August to September, there’s a 5% decrease, and then from September to October, there’s a 5% increase. Now go look at last year and look at those same relationships. Is is it? Is it normal to have that dip in September and to see a rise back in October? Look at the year prior to that, and the year prior to that. And we’re getting very, very logistical about this, but it’s so important. On

Brandon Welch 8:56
your Trend Lines, your website traffic will almost always follow the revenue curve. Like it may be a slightly bit delayed because people are researching two or three weeks before they Yeah, pull, but it’s like it’s going to have the same flow to it.

Caleb Agee 9:11
So and then do that same thing on your number of transactions, transactions,

Brandon Welch 9:16
yep, sales, closing percentage. And just make notes. Don’t make notes. Don’t make any assumptions. Yet. We’re going to get to the what to do about it here in just a second. But what I was going to say, if you can, especially with a weird roller coaster that you know, even some pandemic and some, like big market swings have had in the last few years, if you can look at last year, the year before and the year before that, and say, okay, am I is this the lowest year I truly had in those trends? Because sometimes just being on a growth trend from like, 2021 or 2020 like, if you’re on track with that year, like, where you would have been growth trend wise, maybe you went super high. Maybe you had a 30% quote, unquote growth. Year outlet, or year in 21 or 22 and it went back down to kind of average in 23 and 24 may just be on that, that plotted line. So not to get too much in the weeds for your filtering out outliers. We’ve talked about that just just note like, do we have any home run sales that are making these numbers look skewed? Take those out and just and try to trend it with or without those five probably my, my favorite leveling question. Every business has a maturity cycle, and it is very, very easy to launch and go from 0% market share to 5% Like honestly, just by showing up and doing half the things right and being another vendor on the list. If your population is relatively healthy and you’re relatively not saturated like you’ll get to 5% market share just by going through the motions. Yeah, you’ll definitely get to three right? And when I say market share, I’m saying take all the business in your market, your area, your trade area, and say, what percentage of that am I getting? Really easy way to do it is to say is to look at employee counts, if somebody’s market you know, if somebody’s market share is or, sorry, if somebody’s employee count is 15 and yours is five, you probably got about a third of

Caleb Agee 11:16
the size they have, right? Yeah. So triple, triple. They get your best

Brandon Welch 11:21
guess at what all your competitors are doing revenue, and then compare yours. Divide that into it kind of get a percentage. There’s a there’s a third party thing we’re going to talk about in a second. You might be able to look at but get it. Get a feel for what your market share is. If you’re, if you’re at that five to 10% market share, and you’re going, Wow, growth is slowing. It’s because it should. Yeah, it gets way harder After you get past that double digit market share. Yeah,

Caleb Agee 11:46
and the same is true. It happens at different rates. But in your first year in business, you’re gonna you obviously have no history. But then your second year, it’s very common to double your triple, you know, double your revenue. And the third year, maybe you double it again, but the fourth year, you’re like, things are slowing down. It’s not because you’re doing a worse job or anything. You’re just maturing. And that’s the it’s reflective of this curve that you would see unless,

Brandon Welch 12:11
if your business is, gosh, you know, more than five years old, you’ve got to be making some aggressive moves to continue double digit growth. Some, some exceptions there would be, if your market is just growing, like your population is exploding, like, kind of like it is in the Midwest, or some, some towns like that can happen. But you’ve got to be, you’ve got to be riding some serious energy to continue multiple, multiple years of double digit growth. Yeah. Look

Caleb Agee 12:40
at the look at the stock market, look at all, all these massive companies. If they could pull it off, they would, yeah, but you see what maturity looks like, and normal growth inside of an economy, uh, levels out.

Brandon Welch 12:52
So we’re measuring two things. We’re measuring what was your year, your year over year growth, and what’s that been? Has it been like, you know, eight, 910, and now you’re at nine again, or maybe you’re at seven and a half. It’s like, what’s reasonable? Because the bigger you get, the obviously, the harder it is to keep that double digit growth. And then also, just know this is just purely an experience thing. Can’t tell you scientific. I’m just telling you, after doing this hundreds of times, when you get to that 10% market, share, you got to be doing some really innovative things. You got to add different ways to sell and different ways for people to buy from you, to get from that 10 to 20% market share, and getting and getting past 30% market share like you, like one out of three people in your market are buying you instead of a competitor. Gosh, that’s really, really tough. I can think of two clients we’ve ever that’s ever been the case it would be

Caleb Agee 13:46
hard to maintain, to continue to hold as well. Yeah, frankly,

Brandon Welch 13:51
they were, yeah. Those are, those are industries where you have to have some serious intellectual property and some proprietary ways of doing things that nobody else can break through, because otherwise you’re ripe for disruption.

Caleb Agee 14:01
Yeah? Somebody else gonna do it. Come take a bite. Yep, so review

Brandon Welch 14:05
part one looking at the numbers that matter. Yeah, we’re gonna probably ignore month over month, or maybe even quarter over quarter. We’re gonna go quickly to year over year trends and maybe year over year over year, and try to get the best average of like, the last three to five years, okay? And just kind of compare our revenues to that. Don’t just look at revenue, because inflation screws that up. We’re going to look at transactions. We’re going to look at average ticket price. We’re going to look at sales close rates. If you’re not tracking these things, start today, yeah, start today and do your best guess to compare them to, you know, the past years. But

Caleb Agee 14:37
hopefully you’re using a good CRM and accounting software that you can run some quick reports on these kinds of things, even just

Brandon Welch 14:43
a just a plain old Excel sheet that said, month to month, what was our appointments? What was our appointment? Set rate, what was our close rate? What was our revenue? What was our average sale? Just keeping that rolling. Our clients that are growing the most efficiently are doing things like that, right? Yeah. Um, filter out the outliers. Don’t, don’t get all torn up about something that was too big to matter or too small to matter, you know, in years past, and then compare against your rate of growth. And know that the bigger you get, the harder it will be to compare, to keep that same rate of growth without some extreme moves. Yeah. So certainly, if you’re past that 10% market share number,

Caleb Agee 15:22
we’ve gathered the facts and we’ve put them all together, you probably cannot help yourself but make some assumptions at this point. You’re seeing some trends. You’re seeing some things happen, up down, about the same. And now what we want to do is find out why. Why are we seeing what we’re seeing in these numbers

Brandon Welch 15:43
and and try to avoid the the, I guess, emotional assumption that something’s wrong, right or or I’m doing it could be both. Could be hubris. Could be I’m doing everything right. That’s why I’m growing. Because a lot of people thought they were growing because of their excellence a couple years ago, and it really was just they were riding a wave, yeah, and they spent money like they were entitled to spend money, and they maybe, you know, made moves they shouldn’t have made in their in their business or in their personal income, and now they’re going, now they’re crying the blues. So, yeah, find out why. And so know if you’re riding a trend, or know if it’s actually because of some sort of actual dependable, sustainable thing that you’re doing. So what we’re

Caleb Agee 16:24
going to do is just systematically look at really outside of the spreadsheet. You just made outside factors. So you can’t see in a spreadsheet, but you will be able to research and know whether these things have changed. So first thing to find out why, or is. Figure out what major changes have you made in marketing and sales so that could look like budget? Have you made any big changes in adding or removing medias? Have you changed your strategy? Have you changed your messaging,

Brandon Welch 16:56
and not just, not just this year, but like that’s, probably Harvard says that that’s an 18 to a 36 month window, like a lab measure you’re paying for moves you made last year, two and three years ago, sometimes at least, at least up to two years ago. Yeah. So now, now they could also be shorter term, like you’re a star salesman goes, and that’s an immediate hit, right? You change your phone scripts, or you stop being open on Saturdays, or you stop offering some sort of product, or you stop going to some market or or, you know, the inverse of that, you start doing those things better. Those can have immediate effects, yeah, but just know that your scope of like looking out of what has changed shouldn’t just be last month, like it should be, you know, a year and two years ago. So what did you change your marketing plan? My favorite thing that happens is when people made a budget change a year ago, and then, like, 1218, months go by and they’re like, holy crap, we’ve grown a lot. I’m like, Yeah, that’s because you have the courage to start investing in tomorrow’s customer. Yeah, that’s right. So shout out to basically every Frank and Maven client. Yes, that’s what’s happened to them.

Caleb Agee 18:11
Yep. And so you want to look at these things and notate them. You’re you’re really aligning this with different moments on that spreadsheet we just built about your your financials, yes. And then you want to say, Oh, well, we did check hired an all star salesperson at this point. Yes. That might count for Okay, so you’re starting to make acknowledgments of what might have caused some of these curves. And

Brandon Welch 18:36
the real goal is for year to year, for the amount of people you’re reaching in that tomorrow category to never have changed. You might change. You might trade one, you know, TV station for another, or sometimes a whole media for another, or ad media. But you don’t want that total number of people influenced to go down. Yeah. So, um, look very, very closely. This is often overlooked. Was I making more aggressive offers? Was I showing up at home shows or trade shows or community events better a year ago than I am now? Was did I have a change in my phone staff? Am I answering the phones differently? Did my sales staff change, and did my follow up process change? Sometimes talent just either gets tired or our processes change, or somebody gets promoted, or somebody leaves, and we don’t look at those as like the big Yeah, like catalysts, yeah to our overall even business

Caleb Agee 19:30
growth, even just strong sales management can change. And that’s actually a slow you feel that slowly drift throughout the throughout the year. You may not feel that immediately, but if they’ve lost the spark in the fire inside of them, that will slowly taper off as time goes on and they need to be relit. Yes, sir. So yeah,

Brandon Welch 19:50
all right. So what major changes have happened in sales and marketing? Here’s the next one. This is often overlooked. What are your major competitors? Is doing. So if you haven’t done those things, if nothing’s changed in your world, have they put their foot on the gas pedal? Have they been more strategic than you? Yeah, are they hiring or firing? This is an unlooked signal, but if you go on indeed right now, and your competitors have more ads like recruiting for people than you do, they’ve got a different appetite and different strategy, and you need to be expecting that that affects you in the next six to 18 months. Yeah? Like, that’s a really good thing to just keep your eye out on. Yeah, that’s great. Or delegate a, you know, one of your team members to weekly. Just say, how many ads do our competitors have out like our top three to five? And I don’t ever want you to get emotional about chasing your competitors, but you need to go, what’s going on there? Yeah, and in some industries that are supply driven, like, thinking of my contractors, you guys all drive to the same depot in town to get your lumber in, your lumber, or your shields, or whatever, dude, talk to your reps and what are you seeing? Who just got fired, who’s hiring, like, there’s, there’s a there’s a word on the street, and sometimes your vendors and your, you know, partners, can kind of give you a, kind of a macro overview of that. When you see your competitors adding new offices, I’m thinking about my lawyers and my doctors, like, when you see that expanding, you know, there’s a competitive force coming from you, and they’re, they’re, they’re scooping up market share, yeah, and maybe that’s why you are, maybe you’re the one that’s done that, or maybe that’s why you know you are, aren’t growing. And then noise in the marketing channel. What are the signals for those? Yeah, I

Caleb Agee 21:39
think you can, you can check on some like Google search, like sem rush.

Brandon Welch 21:45
That’s a tool. Just go to semrush.com it’s not going to work at a really small level, but if you are a regional business, you can go and say, Hey, are there my spending compared to my competitors, or just good old fashioned Google ads, or talk to your Google Ads nerd and say, what are the what are the auction insights? You can tell who is essentially spending more money than

Caleb Agee 22:06
you are. Pay attention. I mean, when you’re driving around, look for billboards, listen to the radio, watch TV, watch the Facebook ads. You’re probably, if you’re in your industry, you’re probably a target for the ads of your competitors. It’s actually

Brandon Welch 22:18
one of the clues that you’re growing is that competitors start knocking you off. Number seven in tomorrow marketing is if somebody starts chasing and doing more noise, that means you probably put a little more pressure on them than they like, and so they’re saying yes to those advertising proposals, and they’re making more noise than they used to. Yep, this is you need to find a trusted media rep. Often, a TV or radio station will have what’s known as a Kantar Media report, and it’s essentially a service that measures what different advertisers are spending, and it’s a relative number. It’s not exact, but they’re gonna be able to tell you, hey, starting January this year, over last year, did so and so competitor spend more than you, or who was the most aggressive voice? Yeah, Kantar Media, you just need to ask a local TV or radio rep. Some will have it. Some will not, yeah. What

Caleb Agee 23:05
I want, what I want to emphasize here on the competitors, um, it’s what is it? Uh, losers focus on winners, and winners focus on winning. Winning is that how it’s the quote goes,

Brandon Welch 23:17
Yeah, losers focus on competitors. Winners focus on. So

Caleb Agee 23:20
I want to make sure this is, like, a healthy awareness. This is like, I’m I’m aware of what’s going on, but I also know I’m doing my own thing and I’m not getting distracted by all this. So look out. Business Owner is where your emotions can show up, and maybe what should be a very logical thought process, what they are doing if they’re making more noise, they could be making bad decisions just as much as they’re making good decisions. If they’re hiring more people to put on payroll, that could be a poor decision. It’s just an indication of what’s going on and what they’re thinking, we have more business, or we’re going to have more business. So we’re gonna do this yes and or they’re laying people off, we have less business. So we need to do this. You can’t know exactly that often.

Brandon Welch 24:03
We’ll see that in search engines, they’ll be like, they’ll tell their search engine person double or triple the budget, and they’ll kind of start a bidding war, and that the person that the owner or the marketing person that said that didn’t realize that they were when you double search budgets that quickly, often, you’re begging for unprofitability, just because it jacks up so many things. And so we’ll see in a month where a client got a way less impression share because somebody was out bidding. And we’re like, you know what? We’re going to wait that out. Because next 30 to 45 days, they’re going to be yelling at somebody about how much they spent and how much they didn’t get for wasted, yep, wasted money. So sometimes it’s sometimes it’s a it’s just wait and see. Yes, but if you’re going, Hey, that was a good offer. Be humble enough to go, man, they’re beating me there.

Caleb Agee 24:46
They did that. Well,

Brandon Welch 24:47
I need to level up my game. Yep,

Caleb Agee 24:49
that’s good. So okay, so next we’re going to we’re still trying to find out why the numbers are the way they are. We’re looking at industry trends. So we’ve got a few different ways to look at that. First, Google search trends. Yes, I don’t know if you know this, but there’s an interesting tool out there called Google trend search, or whatever they call it.

Brandon Welch 25:05
And maybe Marketing Podcast trending. It’s, it’s, I

Caleb Agee 25:09
don’t know, we could check it out trends.google.com or you can just, you know, Google it, if you type in something like new whatever you sell new roof, new windows or new cars, estate plans, or, or, or something. Company, right, roofing company, window company, yeah. Advertising company, right. Type those in and hit the Search switch. The date range is going to start with like last seven days, that is, that’s nothing. Switch it to 12 months. And what you’re going to look at is the curve of the intent. This is what you’re measuring of everybody in America who has decided they need new whatever you’re selling, yes. And then after you do that. So run a couple of those searches at 12 months after you do that, switch it to five years Yes, and you can watch the curve go over and over and over again. Pay attention to the bumps in the road. Yes, that I will guess, is where your bumps will also show up. Yes, but

Brandon Welch 26:13
90 and 180 days before those bumps, that’s when you need to actually be the most aggressive, like when business is down, that’s when you that’s when you pull like, that’s when you go put seeds in the ground. Because every person who’s ever made money in the stock market knows they make it on the buy. On the buy, yeah, you buy when it’s down. That’s like a Warren Buffett says, I love it when the stock market goes down, because I get to go buy a bunch of companies at a discount. That’s right, that’s your time to buy human influence at a discount, because most people are Chicken Little, thinking the sky is falling and they’re pulling back of those things you want to zig while they zag. Yep.

Caleb Agee 26:48
And you’re not going to do that because you’re looking at this in a smart way, yeah. So pay attention to that. You can also the data is not as strong, but you can also click on your state and and see those same trends. It’s just a little bumpy. It’s not as smooth. So the national trends are a little bit easier to

Brandon Welch 27:04
market. That’s over, you know, a couple million people. You’ll probably get some reliable data there. If

Caleb Agee 27:08
you have a Google search partner who’s running Google search ads, you can also look at your impression share and impression count. Yes, we won’t get into the weeds of that, but you could quickly look at those to indicate intent. All we’re trying to figure out is, are people in the market for what you’re selling? Yes, at a similar or different rate than they were, it will

Brandon Welch 27:26
tell a clear story. And if you’re if you’re a little bit down, and you’re going, Oh, but my industry is being searched less because I don’t know, maybe it’s an election year, or maybe they bought an abundance of that product two years ago, and so there’s less people in the market like that is some really, really reliable data. Everybody will give a clue on a search engine. Like the whole of humanity will give a clue as to what they’re about to do.

Caleb Agee 27:50
Yeah, that’s big data.

Brandon Welch 27:52
That’s big data. So

Caleb Agee 27:52
it’s good for you.

Brandon Welch 27:53
Second thing is look at industry data. So no matter if you’re you know, professional or tradesman or anything. There is somebody who’s gathered all of the people that look like you and the world, and they’ve done the polls, and they’ve pulled the data to where you know, even by region, how everybody else is doing. Now, hopefully you’re like my friend Steve, and you’re like my friends and the window businesses, and you have a group that you actually meet with regularly, yeah, right, where you are, like, very, very often, comparing your trends and what’s going on. Like, you need a peer network. Vistage is an awesome thing to look into as well. Just, you know, get together with a bunch of other CEOs. So, but let’s say you don’t have that you want to. You want to just kind of do this from scratch, find the trade, you know, Association for your industry, and they’ve put out a report, and they’ve put out blog articles, and they’ve probably got a podcast and they’ve probably got YouTube content, and just get a feel for what’s going on. A big takeaway here, it’s not that we settle. It’s not that we go, oh, everybody’s down, so I’m going to be down too. It’s okay. How am well, hopefully we’re not ever emotional about it. But how, how aggressively do I need to react to this? Because if your industry is climbing, climbing, climbing, and you’re flat, that’s a problem. Somebody is stealing your lunch. You need to find out who go back to the last point and better, and figure out who’s eating your lunch, who’s making more noise than you, who’s been a more courageous marketer and be humble enough to go, who maybe has the better product, maybe, who has better reviews, who’s got the Mojo right? Because that’s a that’s a backup, and strategically reposition and go, How am I going to win against this big bad wolf, or what am I going to do differently to take this the scraps or the inverse? But if your industry is down and you are down, you go, okay, better actually, that’s probably better news, because a rise is coming, right? There’s, there’s a wave coming. And you just need to be prepared to jump on it and be ahead of the market when it decides to come back. That’s right. Makes sense? Yeah.

Caleb Agee 30:10
Go look for those. Talk to a lot of times, big suppliers and financial partners. They have a vested interest in knowing how your market is trending, and so they have big research out there, and they usually can provide you some good numbers. We

Brandon Welch 30:25
have a, we have a client that sells a really well known national product. It’s a, it’s an outdoor product. It’s a big, big brand, okay? And they, so they have a retail store that does this, and they happen to also be the distributor that hooks up, like the other 250 dealers of this product. Okay, in the Midwest, yeah. And so anytime, like, there’s something up or down, we’re like, how are the other 250 doing? And we know when the good or bad. We know when we’re, you know, beating that trend, that we’re we’re on the, we’re on the edge of excellence there. So, yeah. So worldwide trends. Hey, is there a war going on? Do people want to basically walk around killing each other every day? Are people just generally pissed off and anxious? Yeah, that might have something to do with it. Yeah.

Caleb Agee 31:13
Is it literally, is has it been raining, or has it been the sun shining outside? Everybody knows so more when it’s not raining. I mean,

Brandon Welch 31:22
I cannot tell you how many times there’s this, there’s this website that looks at historical weather and kind of back to the very first point. A Home Improvement client usually will be like, gosh, I was killing it last March, and it’s been crickets, you know, yeah, March. I’m like, I’m literally Googling, like, weather trends. I’m going, Well, do you remember when it was like, either super rainy or super depending on what they sell? Yeah. And it’s like, oh yeah. And I’m not even kidding you, hundreds of times I’ve lined up a spike in web traffic, sales, appointments and revenue to the exact same like, rain weather forecast. So, yep, that’s a thing. And all that means is it’s coming. Yeah, dude, it’s gonna rain. It will the sun will come out tomorrow, and the rain will come out tomorrow too, right? Like,

Caleb Agee 32:11
you’re about to start singing. So yeah, elections.

Brandon Welch 32:15
I could mark, I could go look at my phone records over the last 15 years, and clients would call, you know, beginning of October and be like, it’s getting weird, like, yep, remember two years ago when this happened? Or four years ago when it really happened? Yep, yes. I think

Caleb Agee 32:27
if you’ve been around for eight or four or you can go look at the last presidential election cycle, see how you trended. When did it? Did it usually you, you know, people dip a little bit earlier that year. When does it start happening? So you can be prepared. Okay, so the last and final point, this is the best this is my favorite part, right? There’s something in it for you. What do I do about it? I just gathered all this information. I looked at my trends. I looked at the real numbers of my revenue and my transactions. I’m comparing it, not weeks over weeks or months over months. I’m looking at year over year. And then I looked at the world around me, and I looked at the industries, I looked at the search trends, I looked at what everybody’s projecting, that we’re doing. And I have a sober view. I have a very real view of of what’s going on. Now the question is, what do I do about it? Help me out Brandon

Brandon Welch 33:23
number one, no matter what good or bad, and I would actually emphasize the next time it gets really, really good for you, remember this one point, you need to have staying power. Okay? The companies that stand the test of time are the ones that put back for the winter and don’t spend like crazy during the summer, right? They’re just, they’re reasonable, and I don’t care who you got to listen to. Dave Ramsey, stuff is excellent for entre leadership. But find any skilled like listen to your CPA like you want. I think a minimum of six months operating cash in the bank. Yeah, and you’re going to get through any storm. You’re going to be able to buy a competitor who’s going out of business because they didn’t do this. You’re going to be able to invest in new technology or the most talented people. You’re going to be able to zig while everybody else is zagging. So no matter what, the biggest rule I can say is, have staying power. And frankly, if I can be just like super honest with you, from a consulting firm, we do this stuff for free, like, we always, always, always wake up wanting to make entrepreneurs better. We will never stop doing that. We’re not too good for that. That will always be our mission until we are no longer around. But the companies we decide to hitch our wagon to meaning the ones that we’re like, yes, we can enter in a partnership where we’re helping you grow your company. We do not do that. If this company, we get a sense that they don’t have staying power. If they are trying to swing for the fences to save against something, we’ll bail out of that every single time. And we’ll say, come back to us when you have staying power. That’s right. Right? That’s not because we’re too good. That’s just because to do things right and to do things where it’s where it’s not a, you know, glorified gamble, yeah, you have to have a safety net.

Caleb Agee 35:11
Yeah? And that because the alternative is you make decisions out of fear when you don’t have cash is king, and when you don’t have cash on hand, you will make your decisions based on, I have payroll next Friday, yep, and that will affect everything you do and say for the next week and a half. And so what you have to do is have that staying power and that maturity in your business to be steady

Brandon Welch 35:33
and confident instead of emotional, scared and flighty, yep. So I would rather see you shrink. I’d rather see you politely exit, you know, people out of your company and get lean and mean and then snowball that to a staying power force. Okay, you said, said that about staying powers. That’s step one. Always Step Two Always be earning tomorrow’s customer. Yes, you have to have step one before you can do step two, because Step Two requires that you have a little bit of staying power. And so everybody right now, like I’m thinking of the industries that measure their progress, like the automotive industry, every 30 days, they freak out if they didn’t have a this month wasn’t as good as last month. And they never, never commit to here today, here, tomorrow, here, when you need us. But guess what? The public, all research says that the public wants to buy the company who’s here today, here tomorrow, here when you need us, and to be the company who’s here today, here tomorrow, here when you need us. You have to have the budget, the mentality, the emotional like fortitude to say, I’m a partner, not a vendor. I want to be purchased for quality, commitment, relationships with you and your family instead of my today’s price. Yep. And to do that, you have to always be telling a story that requires some media and or some some customer experience excellence, yeah? Like, you just have to always be thinking, what’s the right thing to do? What’s the best thing to do, not what grabs me the money? Yeah?

Caleb Agee 36:59
Because when you have the staying power. You know, I’m not going out of business next month, and I’m gonna market like I’m not going out of business. Yes, I’m thinking 10 years down the road. I’m guessing five years down

Brandon Welch 37:07
right right now, there is a gazillion people walking around going, Oh, I don’t know what I should do. I don’t know what

Caleb Agee 37:12
I should literally, I don’t know what’s gonna happen tomorrow. Yeah, is election day. Yeah,

Brandon Welch 37:17
hey, it’s November 4. And congratulations. We’re almost through it, kind of but yeah, there’s and so and so. The companies that are reacting to that, I can think of some people that have called me that are 30% down, not not our clients, but like some of them, I’m going, Yeah, you know it’s gonna come back, but that’s the time you want to be building tomorrow’s customer. Because when the public comes out of that storm, they go, Ah, that was the committed competitor all along. That was the provider I needed to know and trust. Yeah,

Caleb Agee 37:49
we have some clients who are up maybe a smaller amount than they were in previous years, but their market, their industry, so they look at these trends, is supposed to be down 16% Yeah, but they’re up 7% this year, and they’re saying, I look at the delta between those two, yeah, that is up a lot more than 6% and then the benefit of that, because it all comes around after maybe, if it’s because of the election season or because of an economic trend, you see a big difference next year. As soon

Brandon Welch 38:16
as that headwind subsides, and it will subside, they’re going to slingshot to the freaking moon, that’s right, while their other competitors are just trying to start the engine back. They’re man, they’re on the highway already. These

Caleb Agee 38:28
guys are already talking to somebody daily, every day, yep. Okay. Third,

Brandon Welch 38:32
so have staying power always be earning tomorrow’s customer and three, do not be afraid to make a wild offer out of nowhere to jolt something. Okay, just because you’re buying tomorrow’s customer doesn’t mean you can’t have a little fun. Doesn’t mean you can’t be crazy. Now, do this sparingly. Go watch last week’s episode about how to cash in on your brand equity that you built the tomorrow customer you built. But dude, sometimes people just need a reason to buy. Yeah, and when it ain’t raining, they don’t need they don’t need to buy a roof and and when you know every news outlet in the world is telling them that the world’s about to end, they don’t need to buy a freaking barbecue grill. But if you give them a big enough reason, that’s right, we’ll do it. Yeah, and I’m not suggesting that you stay in that and ever in that low profit mentality, but I am saying sometimes you need to shake some stuff up, throw a stick of dynamite in that, you know, pile of logs to get the river moving. Was a, that was a lumberjack analogy. Yeah, other flannel wearers out there, bring it on. Let’s go. Yeah. So, yeah, go ahead, yeah. Well, I

Caleb Agee 39:35
think, I think when you do that, just don’t get stuck in that, in that mode. Realize when it’s time to be done, and just acknowledge that this is just for a season. We’re going to do it, and we’re going to get out, and then we’re going to continue commit, committed to our tomorrow. Customer,

Brandon Welch 39:49
yes. So last thing, and this is a special, special, special offer for you. We’ve never done this, not one single time in almost two years of doing this podcast. Say almost two years. It’s like. Said 1.7 years. But

Caleb Agee 40:01
hey, we’ll take it, round it up. We’ll round it up

Brandon Welch 40:05
if, if you’re looking at all this and going, Man, I know something’s off. I know I have an opportunity, and you’re not quite sure what moves to make in the noise department and the marketing and strategy department, get with a pro like the most valuable thing you could have is an outside set of eyes, okay, somebody who will look at these trends and go, Yep, I’ve seen that before, and this is what to do next. And yep, this is who you are. Don’t forget who you are. Don’t forget who you are. Let me tell you. Let me help you. Tell that story to the world. Get with somebody who’s skilled at doing that. And if you don’t have that person, Caleb and I are going to lend our team to you, if you were one of the first three people to send us an email saying, Give me a marketing audit. We charge 1000s of dollars for this service. Okay, I’m going to give three of them away on this podcast, and it will be. All it’s going to take of you is your time. There will be no sales pitch, nothing like that. But we will sit down for the hours it takes to go through this properly. We will give you a proper consult between now and the end of the year, and you will leave with some, definitely, some clarity. We believe the plan that we give you will work and lead you to a very, very profitable 2025, and beyond, yeah, and it would just be our joy to give that to you guys as a gift. And all you need to do is send an email to Maven Monday at Frank and maven.com and say, give me the free marketing audit.

Caleb Agee 41:39
Please, please, just kidding. You can say, you could say however you want. You can, you can give it an exclamation mark. So, so excited. Yeah, yeah, that would that’s going to be a blast. We’d love to talk to you. If you’re in town. We’ll have you, we’ll have you by otherwise, we’ll hop on a on a call, and, yeah, make it happen. And

Brandon Welch 41:57
hey, if you’re, if you’re a media rep like Raj, and by the way, if you’re in the North Carolina area and you need some billboards, hit up our buddy, Raj, yeah, Raj, Raj, I think it’s Raj, yep, yep, you got it. But if you’re a media rep and you want us to do this for one of your clients, literally no strings attached, or if you want us to walk you through this so you can do it for one of your clients, maybe that would be even better. So you can be the Pro and the hero. We’ll throw that in as part of the offer too. So, yeah, anything else to add?

Caleb Agee 42:27
I think that’s it.

Brandon Welch 42:27
What a monster episode.

Caleb Agee 42:29
Yeah, I think just anytime you feel like you’re being led by your emotions, pause for a moment, take a breath, talk to somebody you trust, to check, check yourself, and then go through this process and make sure that you’re looking at the world objectively. We usually do it mostly in the in the negative space, but it’s actually just as important to do it in the positive space. When you have a big growth year to not, not be living high and mighty. It’s the what’s the quote? Times of

Brandon Welch 43:05
hard times create good men. Yeah, this is the one, no, but

Caleb Agee 43:10
you go for it. Sorry, do your quote first? I’m fine. We’re

Brandon Welch 43:12
taking extra time, but hard times create good men. Good men, or sorry, hard times create strong men. Strong men create Good times. Good times create weak men. That’s good cycle repeats, right? Yeah. So I think, I think, I think we’re at a point of potentially suffering, yeah, from the good times that strong men have made. Yeah.

Caleb Agee 43:35
I think the quote I have is times of poverty always follow. Times of misused abundance. Oh, that’s even better. So be careful when you have a time of abundance, because if you misuse it, the down comes real fast. So

Brandon Welch 43:53
yeah, that’s it. Hallelujah. Amen. You guys are going to do wonderful. We can’t wait to talk to the three of you that reach out for the free marketing audit, and we will be back here every week answering your real life marketing questions, because marketers who can’t teach you why

Caleb Agee 44:09
are just a fancy lie. Have a great week.