Peaks & Valleys Playbook: What to Do When Business Is Slow (and When It's Slammed)

Feeling whiplash from the peaks and valleys in your business? In this episode, we share a practical playbook for riding the inevitable ebbs and flows without panic or price-slashing. You'll learn how to plan for slow seasons, what to focus on when you're slammed, and why margin (not volume) is your real recession insurance. We also break down smart ways to raise prices, swap discounts for value-adds, and "train" clients to buy at full price. You'll walk away with clear actions to stabilize cash flow, protect profit, and make better decisions so you can enjoy the busy seasons and actually leverage the slow ones.

Highlights
00:00 Why uncertainty is guaranteed and how to prepare instead of panic.
02:10 Peaks & valleys 101: identifying your predictable busy/slow seasons.
05:00 Bad Business Advice of the Day: "The customer is always right" (what's actually true).
08:15 Busy season game plan: rinse-and-repeat rhythm, protect focus, avoid new strategy sprawl.
11:30 Slow season strategy: what to work on vs. what to intentionally ignore.
14:25 Why staying cheap repels premium buyers (steakhouse analogy).
17:40 When to raise prices (and why Q4 slowdowns can be the perfect window).
20:30 Promos that attract loyal clients instead of bargain hunters.
26:45 How constant promos "train" customers—and how to retrain for full-price buying.
29:20 Case example: pairing a premium purchase with a complimentary add-on (win-win promo).
32:00 Margin as insurance: why profit discipline makes downturns survivable.
35:15 What not to do when it's slow.
37:40 Lessons to make your business recession proof.
40:05 Your "CEO list" for slow weeks.
48:30 Action checklist: raise prices, plan value-adds, calendar your slow-season projects.

Resources + Links

Apply for Luxury Clothier Collective Mastermind HERE

More resources for custom clothiers HERE

Watch on Youtube

Follow

Appointment Only in IG: @appointmentonlypod

Resources + Links
Apply for Luxury Clothier Collective Mastermind  HERE
More resources for custom clothiers HERE
Watch on Youtube

 Follow
Appointment Only in IG: @appointmentonlypod

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Uncertainty is going to happen. Things that are unexpected will happen. So, what are we supposed to do? We know these things are coming. We know that this is going to happen. So let's do what we know we need to do. Let's let's put ourselves in a position where we can weather that storm because there is going to be something on the other side, assuming you make it to the other side. This is Appointment Only, the podcast for entrepreneurs building profitable high-end businesses. If you want control, profit, and freedom from the endless hustle, this is for you. We're Kenny and Danny, twin brothers from day one and business partners for 15 years. We're sharing insights from our own experiences running a high-end small business, the highs, the lows, and what we've learned along the way that will help you build businesses you enjoy running that aren't running you. We're here to help you continue creating businesses that support the life you actually want to live. Your appointment starts now. Just another day doing what we love. What's your goal for the episode? My goal for the episode is smooth sailing and impactful. Okay. But also a little clarity about ebbs and flows. Oh, nice. My goal is to go viral. So set the bar low. Welcome back to Appointment Only. Thanks for tuning in. We're gonna we're gonna talk today about something that comes up a lot in our mastermind group. Because to everything there is a season, there are highs and there are lows, and there are often things times things you can predict. And there are also oftentimes things that you cannot predict. But if your business is anything like ours, if your industry is anything like ours, chances are good you probably have some times that are generally predictably high and predictably low. The peaks and the valleys. An example of something that you can't predict is for those of you watching on YouTube, you probably this outfit definitely looks familiar, but it's not predictable. It's I'm thinking that's predictable, but it's not the exact same outfit as I most recently wore because I am not wearing a tie. You were predicting that we were gonna do another episode today. So you brought a change of clothes. I did. I did bring a change of clothes, and I I hope you love it. I don't. It's you don't? I think it looks good. You think it's fine? Yeah, we'll see. I like it. I've never worn this particular combo, so we're kind of we're testing it out. And uh for a while there, I was thinking it was throwing off the camera, but I think it's not. We were trying to do so. We were trying to do some setting stuff on the camera, and I was telling Kenny it's all blown out, and then he looked at it and he was like, It's just zebra. It's just zebra. Dawg. Like, what? I don't know what that means. It's just zebra. Relax. Ever heard of it? Ever heard of it? And well, he obviously hasn't. No, I haven't. He's not the the tech guru like me, just a tech god, just loves tech. Mark Zuckerberg, that's right. Oh yeah. If only he probably had never has any downs. Which is the ebbs and the flows. Which is the down ebb? Flow. See, that's that's confusing. The highs and the lows, the ups and the downs. And I'm also curious if talking about ebbs and flows as peaks and valleys, is that Christian? Like, is that like a like Christianese? Yeah. I don't know. To talk about things like, oh, that's a valley and that's a peak. Let me look at that. I'm not sure. Peak. That's probably one of those things that's gonna be pretty tough to Google. But the ebbs and the flows come up a lot. I don't think, I don't think that that's I think that's pretty peaks and valleys. Okay. Works. Yep. Okay, great. We're gonna be referring to it as any of those things. They're all synonymous with one another, highs and the lows. You can predict them. We always say if if it's predictable, it's preventable. That's exactly right. Right. So I just I'm kind of loving this definition of peaks and valleys, honestly. I kind of want to just start talking about peaks and valleys because this says peaks, period of high demand, sales, project completion, valleys, times of low productivity, layoffs, or a slowdown in business. I mean, literally, that's exactly what we're talking about. Great, great. Let's do it. Uh, but before we do that, we have to go because I didn't end our last episode on the bad business advice of the day. Oh, that's I forgot to do that. That's our new that's our new that's our new segment. That's our new thing. People are asking, they're begging. Yeah, they are. They're saying more. Yeah, they're saying even more than that. They're saying keep it coming. I know you think you gave us enough, but you didn't quite give us enough. It's never enough. And uh even more encore. Speaking of never enough, we used to go, we still go on the same walking rhythm. We're still in our same shop, and there was a camper that was parked along the river, and it had a bumper. No, it wasn't even a bumper sticker. It was like uh right above the the back windshield. It was plastered on the top and it just said more ass. Just more. It it's never enough for that guy. Uh-uh. He's just or gal. Could never be enough. Or gal. And because it's painted on the camper, it is impossible that they will ever be satisfied. No. The amount of ass. Doesn't matter how much. The limit doesn't exist. Just more. I could always use more. Uh all right. So the bad business advice of the day, this is something you've heard before, and uh, we're just gonna let you know what we think about it. And by we, I mean he. The customer is always right. So that's an incomplete sentence and an incomplete phrase. The whole phrase is the customer is always right in matters of taste. Meaning, in our business, if a client wants to come in and buy a lime green suit, go for it. Who am I to say no? Okay. In your business, whatever it may be, you have your own example of that exact same situation. You know, you know what I would do. If they came in for a lime green suit, I would say, okay, great. I would sell them the suit and then I would say, would you be opposed to having a conversation about adding adding a pair of versatile black pants to that lime green? That way you could wear the lime green jacket as an event jacket and you know, tone it down with a pair of black pants. The customer is always right, is such a boomer phrase. It is somehow, I feel like has made it's it's seeped its way into business culture. And we all know that it's not true, but for some reason, it's just a thing that some people think is like, you know, it just is what it is. The customer is always right. It's like, no, they're not. The customer is almost never right. The customer is never right. And you know how I know. When I went to the dermatologist, I had diagnosed myself with skin cancer terminal, and I didn't have it. So I'm glad that the customer isn't always right. There are sometimes things that uh the customer doesn't really know as much as the experts. But the customer is always right in matters of taste, is the full phrase. You don't get to take the first half of a phrase and act like it's commonplace. Customer is always right in matters of taste. I would to a degree agree with it, but I probably wouldn't sell somebody something that I knew was horrible unless they were willing to take some of my advice to help round it out. Yeah. Like the super versatile pair of pants to go with your line green jacket. Absolutely. Speaking of boomer phrase, you know, there are a couple of episodes that we have, you know, coming up, and they we haven't recorded them yet, but we're saving them. We're saving them for a big impact. One of them is the embezzlement story of the our accountant embezzling from us. The other is an episode that we've that where we've got in the works about millennial versus boomer, the showdown of the century. It could be a doozy, but it might not be. Do we want to just tease it a little bit? Just talk a little off the cuff. I think we need to do it. You know what we're not gonna do? We're not gonna tease it. And why would we do that? We're not gonna get into it at all. No, we're gonna stick into the peaks and the valleys. Back to the peaks and the valleys. Uh, by the way, our producer gave us some great advice, which was essentially shut the fuck up. Just give it to me. Just give it to me straight. Of course, she never didn't say that. I'm sure she would never never use that horrible language. But she basically was like, you know what? You could, I love the banter off the top. Let's keep it quick. Let's keep it quick. Let's get to the point. So that's what we're doing here. The peaks and the valleys, the ebbs and the flows. This is something that we are asked about all the time in our mastermind mentorship group. Because what happens predictably is there are times where business is up and there are times when business is down. Just very candidly between us, our slow time almost like clockwork is Q4. Oh, I thought you were gonna say it at the same time. I thought this is our viral one. Q4. That's when we're always really slow, and uh it is predictable every single year. And over the course of the last decade or so, there have been two, two months of Q4 total that I seem to recall being extremely strong. But for the most part, Q4 is slow. And we always get asked in our in our in our mentorship mastermind, what should I be doing when it's slow? Because isn't that the million dollar question? Like, what should you be doing? Right. Should I still come to work? Should I should I take a vacation? You know, what should I do? Help me. So there are, we're we're gonna walk you through the ebbs and the flows and just give you some ideas of what we could as business owners be focused on in the busy times, you know, what that should look like, as well as the valleys, the lows, the ebbs. I'm not convinced that ebb isn't uh ebb, or is it ebb and flow or ebb and flow? And there's just no way we'll ever know. So uh you you tell me. I don't know. But the the low, the downtime. What uh what should we be doing when it's and when it's busy and when it's slow? We're just gonna we're just gonna let it rip. Well, let's talk about busy first because I feel like that's easy. And I feel like that doesn't take a lot of strategy. And as as a as a business owner, when it's busy, you don't really have the ability to do a whole lot of strategic stuff. Strategery. Strategery. You you kind of just are doing your job. And it feels good. It feels great to be busy. And what we do is we have our rhythm and we come in, we do our job, and we go home. And let me take us, let me let me venture a guess. When you're busy, you uh show up, you do your stuff, and you rinse and repeat. And you're busy. And that's just the way it goes. And you're busy and you feel great about it. So that's what you do when you're busy. You just you do what it takes to get the job done. Sometimes, depending on how prepared you are or or not. Are you hearing that noise? What is that? I don't know. We moved our podcast setup from we were in this really enclosed, small, very hot room. And a few weeks ago, we moved it out into like the main room of the studio. And the lighting's a little bit better, but you can you also can hear a little bit more of what's going on in the building. So sometimes if you hear something, just keep it to yourself. Get over it. Honestly, I don't want to hear about it. But my guess would be for you, it's just you know, maybe sometimes you've been prepared, you're predicting being busy, so you're able to feel like you're, you know, you've got your head on your shoulders screwed on straight. But sometimes you might feel more reactive. But that's normal. When you're busy, you're busy. Let's talk about why you're really here. Let's talk about what we should be doing when we're slow. Because let's be honest, what should we be doing when we're slow? I would guess that most industries have times that are historically slower times. Right? I feel like that's pretty normal, isn't it? Yeah. I mean, unless you're in, you happen to be in. I mean, like let's use maybe uh construction for an example. If you're in construction, you have your busy season, which would be when the weather's cooperating, and then you have your slower season, which would be the winter time. Or like restaurants. I know oftentimes restaurants just close on Mondays because Monday is the slow day. And holidays generally, they're busier. Restaurants are, you know, notoriously slow the month of January because everybody's on their, you know, they're everyone's gonna get healthy the new year. That's right. So they stop going out to eat. They're also they're gonna get healthy, they're gonna save money, they're going to prioritize, they're on going on a vacation for spring break. So they're not gonna be doing anything all that and they're gonna start their workout regimen now so that when they go on their spring break trip, they're gonna have a six-pack. Exactly. Which means if you're in the if you're a personal trainer, you are predictably busy in January because you've got all of these people who have all of the New Year's resolutions and all of the intentions. See what we're doing? There are different times that are busier and slower depending on what industry you're in. And a lot of times it is predictable. So when you're slow, what we end up doing when we're slow is a bunch of nothing. We sleep in, I sleep through the day all day. I wake up, I order a pizza, I fall back asleep. Breakfast pizza. We we have no that's that isn't what we do. We try we try to we try to be strategic about the slow times because we've we've been doing what we're doing long enough where we can predict it. So uh we try to use that time as best as we can, but we also uh try to enjoy the pace. Permission granted. If you need this permission, you need to hear this permission granted to lean in. Lean in. Maybe this is the time where you predictably plan that this is when you're you're taking your family on the your annual vacation. Okay. If you know that you're gonna be slow, you know, every uh year during this season, you this should be the time that you plan that. This should also be the time where you plan to update your website, get new photos, where you rework some things where you raise your prices. There's a really easy uh time to raise your prices. When you know you're gonna be slow and you're not gonna be tempted to blame the fact that you are slow on the fact that you just raise your prices, permission granted to raise your prices then. Because mentally, what we do as as entrepreneurs is we we raise our prices and then we're immediately just like bracing for things to slow down. And if five minutes go by and you haven't gotten a new lead, you're thinking, oh, oh, oh no, I think I maybe just raised my prices too high. We have always, whenever we've raised our prices, and we don't raise our prices every single year, but there have been some years where we've raised our prices twice in a year. So we raise our prices frequently enough. And every time that we do, it's in a time where we are we know it's gonna be slower because it's just gonna feel easier to then when we get busier, start to operate with that new price point. One thing that we always operate with is there's always a light at the end of the tunnel, pace wise. When we're crazy busy and we're feeling like we're firing on all cylinders and we're we're, you know, in appointments much more frequently. We always are able to understand that there's a different pace ahead. When we're slow and we're like, man, where are all the leads? Are we ever gonna be busy again? Are we ever gonna swipe a card ever again? There's always a light at the end of that tunnel. And there have been so many times in our business where we made a certain change and we were talking with each other. It's like, man, I don't, I don't know that we're ever gonna experience that pace again. Sure enough, fast forward however many weeks, a month, whatever, and we're right back into that pace that we, you know, were looking back on as such a great pace, the ideal pace, the best pace ever. This the slow times are the perfect time to implement those changes that you know, and maybe it's not about price. Maybe it's about something else that you know you need to do and you've been putting it off way too long. Maybe maybe it's the time that you're eliminating some offering that you is like your your lowest margin item, and you just you've been hanging on for it for too long. Or that thing that all of your worst customers buy, and you're just waiting for the opportunity to quit selling that thing. A slow time is a great time to do that. In our business, what it ends up being, it's it though, is it's the the big price question. And just like we are constantly getting asked, what should I do when it's slow? The other question we get all the time in our in our coaching and our mentorship, but also just in daily life from people doing what we do is when should I raise my prices? And in our line of work in custom suits, generally speaking, everyone's prices haven't been raised in a long time. You know, that that's of course a generalization. But for the most part, a lot of people are operating on prices that are 10 years old. And I'm not kidding. I'm not trying to be funny. It's pretty crazy. And one of the things that it that is talked about in the book, Someone has to be the most expensive, why not make it you? Andrew Griffiths says he he phrases it, bring up your prices. And the first time I read the book, I remember thinking, like, oh, there's a lot of people who don't even mention price. Oh, as in like bring it up, bring it up in a conversation. Sure. What he's talking about is raising your prices. Yeah. And it is one of those things that I think you would be surprised at how many people are operating off of prices that are multiple years old. And one thing I've learned doing what we've been doing is that our industry happens to be custom suits, custom clothing. But the things that are true of our industry do have a tendency to be true of under other industries. So when I'm over here saying my experience is that custom clothiers are using old prices, they haven't raised them in 10 years. My guess would be whatever industry you're in, too, you are probably overdue for a price increase. We make all these excuses about the fact that, oh, well, you know, it's I'm gonna lose all my customers if I raise my prices. First of all, no, you won't. Secondly, you already are losing customers because of where your prices are, but it's not because they're so high. It's because they're too low. That was one thing we learned many years ago. And oh my goodness, if it wasn't the biggest light bulb that had ever gone off in our minds, we were so focused on operating in this price point because we felt like if we go above this, we're gonna lose clients. People aren't gonna be interested. And we realized that there are so many people that aren't interested right now because of where our prices live. If you think about it in terms of a steak, you're looking for a steakhouse to go eat at and you're you're looking on at menus online. This is just a psychological thing that happens. This isn't, this isn't anything that you're doing wrong or that I'm doing wrong, but I think we have a tendency to do the same thing. You're looking for a steakhouse. This happens a lot if you're, you know, traveling, you're on vacation. All right, I'm on vacation. I want to go have a really, really nice steak dinner. And I'm debating between these two restaurants. I look at the menus online and I see this menu has, you know, a steak that's $80. The sides are $25 each, everything's a la carte. Okay. This steakhouse has a $40 steak. The sides are $12 each. And uh, when you order a steak, it, you know, maybe comes with something. Where's the place that I'm gonna go if I want a really nice steak? I'm gonna go to the one that's way more expensive. Not because I think there's even anything all that different about the two offerings, there's just something psychological about doing the thing that costs more. You assume that there's a value associated with that and uh an actual increase in the uh caliber of the product. You just make that assumption. So, whatever your prices are, if you're someone who is a general contractor, let's say, and your prices are down here, you're losing out on big luxury, great jobs because somebody's looking at you in comparison to this contractor and they're saying, well, that's a low-end contractor. Yeah, they're they're using they're using the value they're hoping to receive. They're they're looking to renovate whatever their basement. And they're identifying this basement, I've I've been told is a $150,000 project. And you're coming in with a $70,000 bid, that person is immediately saying, Well, that's not that's not the level of project I'm looking for. I'm looking for $150. And we're not saying inflate your prices so high that they're unjustified or that you, you know, you're you'll trick someone into using you because you may trick someone into using you once, but you want to you want to make sure that the the caliber of your product is actually in line with the price point. Well, here's here's a here's a little question. We learned this from our mentor. What's what's the most important sale to make? I remember our mentor asked us this question once. And we were like, It was like a quiz. I was so nervous. We were like, well, the first sale. I got it wrong. I know. I was like, the first sale. Because we were thinking, well, the first sale, you know, you prove what you're all about, you show the value. And he's like, wrong. It's sale number two. Sale number one, you have a customer. Sale number two, you have a client. So we're not saying price yourself to the point where you have you work with a whole bunch of customers who get a peek behind the curtain, see what you're all about, and are like, oh, that's not worth the price. Right. We're saying don't be afraid to raise your prices because. You're already missing out on people. And it's people who are looking at your price points. And what they're looking for is exactly what you sell, but they're associating a higher value with it than you even are. A slow time is a really great time to just rip the band-aid off and raise your prices because there will be a new pace ahead. So what shouldn't you do when it's slow? Right? What are some things that we'd recommend maybe not doing? Remember, we said we when we are slow, we're slower right now. When we're slower, we need to remind ourselves to enjoy the pace. Enjoy it. So don't panic. Don't panic that the pace isn't what it was when you were busier. Like for everything, there is a season. And there is always in our business and in yours, probably too, a slower season. Enjoy it. But enjoy it with intention. Don't use it to do these panic-driven things. Don't use that slower time to operate from a place of desperation. Well, what is desperation? It's lowering your prices. It's fire sailing. It's discounting things just to get people in the door. And we have a lot to say about discounts. I'm not saying don't run a special or a promo or something. You know, what a lot of people in our industry do, because everyone's slow during the holidays, is they'll run holiday promotions. Fine. Totally get it. We used to do it too. However, a couple things I'm going to say about that. The first thing is when you're going to do a promotion, I would highly advise, and this does not only apply for those of you who sell custom suits. This is any industry you're in. I would highly advise you if you're running a promo to add value in the promo rather than discount. Don't say 10% off or, you know, however much off. Don't discredit, discount your product. Add value. Throw something in. You know, give them something additional. That's like a value add. Like, yeah. So you're not decreasing the cost of what you're selling. Because what happens is if you if you decrease the cost of what you're selling, if someone's got a deal, well, the next time they need that thing, they're not going to buy it for full price because it's only worth whatever they got it at the discount for. It's just a psychological thing. It's kind of like the steakhouses. People do these interesting, weird things psychologically. And it's just what our experience was in the discounting when we were in the habit of doing these holiday discounts. This is the other thing I'm going to warn you about is people then only associated that value with it and they wanted to cash in, quote unquote, the discount price any year, any time of the year. So they would come in, oh, well, I have this thing and it's for the summer. Do you think you could honor that holiday promotion? And if you don't have the right mindset, you may be tempted to say yes. The other thing that will happen is if you are in the habit of doing some sort of a regular or even, it doesn't even have to be every super regular, but somewhat consistent discounting or promotion, you will find that there are going to be many clients of yours, customers of yours, that don't buy unless you're doing a promo. So they'll, I mean, this happened to us. I remember we used to do these holiday promos and we would try to generate. Anything was a promotion. Labor Day. It's cold outside. Get the percent off of the number of degrees that it is outside if you book soon. I remember doing a derby promo. It's the Kentucky Derby. Get a promo for something creativity, has never been our problem. Let's just say that. Business was our problem for a while. Margins was our problem for a while. We never had an issue coming up with a creative promotion to run. It's just we never figured out until it was, you know, probably too long that uh turns out profitability is much more important than getting people in the door. But because we were so creative with all of our promos and there was no shortage of promos, it's kind of like furniture. You know, it's you know, they roll from Halloween sales, get it before it's gone. Oh, now it's the Thanksgiving sales, and then it's the holidays. There's no such thing as you going into like a chain furniture store and paying full price. They are always going to be running some sort of a promotion. Same thing with windows. This whole like buy one, get one free with free installation and no interest for 18 months. State fair special, that's the Labor Day special too. It guess what? It's also the Halloween special. It's the Christmas special, too, I bet. And the New Year's special and the president's day special. The thing is, they just raise their prices every single year. It goes up by a percentage every single year. It's just a psychology thing. But what happened to us when we were in the business of doing a lot of promos is we would also try to generate clients in the off season when we weren't doing promos. And we heard from one guy once who said, Oh no, I'm good. I'm gonna wait till you run that promo. And we we looked at each other and we said, Oops, I think we should probably never run a promo again. And that's what we told him. We said, Oh, you know what? We're not doing any more promos. Yeah, and we didn't. We told him we were done with promos and we didn't do it. We've done like you mentioned add value, and what that looks like in our business is like pleasantly surprising. When you're at a really nice restaurant and they send out an appetizer from the chef, that feels like, whoa, cool, what a cool experience. I mean, you know it's not anything personal, but you know it's not personal. But it's it's it's different than them saying, you know what we did to show your appreciation for booking this reservation and coming in is we gave you half price on that steak. They're just why did you cook it wrong? Yeah, what did you do wrong? You know what is when you said they bring out the appetizer from the chef? Fine. Thank you. Please thank the chef. What I can't stand is chef brought us. Oh, yeah. Chef, chef would like us to do this. Oh, this is compliments of chef. We were you. We were at restaurant our us and our wives uh together. It was like a new restaurant in town, and they we ordered a tomahawk steak, and I was I was eating it after like we had cut it all up, and then I I like took the the tomahawk steak bone and I was like nibbling on it. Our waitress comes up to me and she said, Chef likes it when you eat it off the bone. It was the grossest thing I you tell chef to stop watching me. You tell chef to put his binoculars away. That's what you can go ahead and tell chef right now. But anyway, what promotions look like for us now, and we don't really even call them promotions anymore, but what we did after we stopped knocking prices down and discounting and operating with this discount mentality, because when you're running discounts all the time or promotions all the time, what you're doing is you're attracting discount buyers. You don't want to attract discount buyers, you want to attract full price buyers who are pleasantly surprised and happy with the product and see the value in what you provide. And that's exactly right because discount buyers don't value you and they don't value the product at all. They only value getting a deal and a discount. And as soon as they sniff out the fact that maybe they're not going to get as good of a deal, they're they've moved on. They're not loyal, they don't value you, they're they're not interested in being a client, they only want to be a customer. And when you're feeding into that and you're playing that game by discounting, this is really on you. And I'm not trying to wag my finger at you and say, you know, bad, bad business owner, bad entrepreneur, bad boy, time for your spanking. I'm gonna tell Chef on you. Uh Chef's gonna come out and spank you. Yeah, he's the bone. Yeah, yeah, chef. Chef's really get his bone out and spank you. The end. Um I'm I I forgot where we were here. Well, I was oh, I was saying no, no, no. Yeah, you're not trying to like, no, no, no. I'm saying this because we used to do this too. Where we we we were like, what's wrong with this? Why are all of our customers so cheap? It's because we were discounting. It's because they came in to cash in the Christopher Columbus Day special. What are you thinking? You're what are you thinking? You're running a flag day discount. Like, duh. But here we are thinking that there's something wrong with our customers when really it's just because we are, you know, it's like the the Arbor Day special. Knock it off. Knock it off. So what we did then is we said, if we're gonna run a promotion, it can benefit the client, yes, but it also has to benefit us too. And we we haven't done anything like this in years at this point, but and we won't. If you're listening and you're and you're a client of ours, we're not ever going to. Well, no. So don't wait. But an example of a promotion that we did say, you know what, this is value adding. It's not just discount breeding. Was we got a a line of custom jeans that we started working with. And we said, man, I'd really love to be able to do some jeans for people, A, to figure out how we're able to nail these fits, but B to kind of, you know, show this vendor that we're serious. So then we ran a promotion and we said, you get a complimentary pair of custom-made jeans when you buy a suit from from a premiere line. So now we're getting these clients to come in who are ready to buy at the time premier suit that then we were able to use some of our margin to do a pair of jeans for them to figure out how the process works for the custom jeans, to give them that added value. We were figuring it out. It's a win-win. It was a great situation to be in. There, there are plenty of ways to have a promotion that adds value to what you do and where the client wins, but where you win as well. And so that's where we kind of took after we heard that from our client, who's like, ah, no, I'm not gonna schedule until you're running your next promotion. And we told him, well, we're never running one again. So whatever. That's where our headspace went is we've got to figure out a different way. Because right now, what we're doing is we're training our customers to expect promotions. And that's one thing that as business owners, you're doing. You're training your customers in the way that you communicate, in the things that you sell, in the way that you sell things, you're communicating customers or you're training customers on how to behave. And if your clients are a whole bunch of discount bargain bin coupon clippers, it's because you trained them for that. That's good. That's an episode in and of itself, right? Yeah, write it down. I'm putting that in the note. But don't panic. If you're in a slow time, you may be tempted, probably will, to run some sort of a discount special. Instead of a discount special, run a value add promotion. If you're wanting to generate more, if you're wanting to get more sales, if you're wanting to get more people to book with you, do something strategic where you win too. That's not a form of panic. A form of panic is I'm slashing the prices, I'm giving the deals, I'm I'm tossing stuff in. What's the Walmart little guy that bounces around? Is he not prices? I don't know. But you know, the smiley face guy. What was his? He had a name, didn't he? Smiles. I don't know. Smiles, McGee. I don't think it was smiles, but it was something like the slasher. No, it wasn't the slasher. Yeah, he was a serial killer. Oh, here comes the slasher. He was a serial killer, actually. Yeah. Uh no, it wasn't, he was the door, but like the I don't know. I know, Kenny. It's not that I don't understand what you're saying. I understand exactly what you're saying. I just don't know his name. So you don't have to describe the mass murderer of propaganda. You don't have to describe him to me. I am all, I know exactly what you're talking about. He was around, he was a character and he bounced. Yeah, I know, trust me, I know. So here's here's actually just for what it's worth, and then we'll talk about the final thing here. Uh, here's something I don't hate. If you're wanting to like generate some quick revenue in a slow time or income. I personally, like we in our business, we are we don't generally push gift cards or anything like that uh just be just because I don't want to cash them in. You know? And it feels worse to receive a gift card as a form of payment than it does to sell it in the moment. And I will happily sell it. You know, it's when we get hit up and it's it's infrequent because the gift card amounts that we sell are very high. And generally we communicate it in terms of items rather than dollar amounts, but that's neither here nor there. What I will say is that in your business, if you want to sell gift cards, you want to push that. A lot of people do that over the holidays because it's an easy gift to give too. I don't hate the idea of adding value to, like, you know, if you buy a hundred dollar gift card, you get $110. You know, I don't hate that. And that's kind of it is a discount technically, but it's not, it's not really communicated like a discount. It's a totally different psychology when you're buying something and getting something additional than when you're buying something and you're paying less than it costs. I think it's just hard to describe because it's hard to explain, because it's behavior. I don't, I mean, I think I just did a really excellent job explaining it, don't you? It's behavior and it's motivation and it's for whatever reason, the psychological. Oh boy, no, I now I'm struggling with it. What's going on? The psychology of a person who is receiving a value add is much different than the psychology of a person who's receiving a discount. If you are a business that adds value, your clientele is totally different than the type of business that rewards discount buyers, that promotes specials and deals and sales. It's just different. Those are the things for predictable, busy, predictable, slow, real quick. You know, unfortunately, we live in a time where there've been some unpredictable slow times, like a pandemic, a recession that was not very long ago, another one that's been, you know, everyone's talking about it. We're hearing is probably on its way here, although I've been hearing that for a few years. So we'll see what happens. But honestly, you know, what is the deal? Here we are. We're just trying to live our lives and run our businesses. Why on earth have we already had to live through now multiple recessions and a pandemic? I feel like this is this, this that's not fair. Aren't these and they're always like, oh, this is once in a lifetime. Once in a lifetime, it's not feeling like once in a lifetime at this point. But what about these times that are unpredictable and are forced on you and you're forced to react? First of all, we all get it, it sucks, right? It sucks, it's inevitable, not fair. There's really no great way to prepare for it either. And depending on what I mean, this is the thing. This happened in in 2020, is certain industries completely disappeared. Ours almost did. Uh, a lot of people doing what we did ended up closing. They didn't make it through. Uh, restaurants were incredibly uh disproportionately affected by what was going on. And then you had other industries that thrived, like furniture and you know, home improvement stuff and and you know, those types of things. So there are going to be different sort of ups and downs as a direct result of pandemics, recessions. You know who does really great in recessions? Job fairs. Job fairs. They do awesome. Job fairs. You know who you know who killed it in COVID specifically? QR codes. Hmm.

unknown 38:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:12

You wanted to be in the QR code business. What a yeah, that's a good business to be in, that is for sure. QR codes and Zoom. Boy, did Zoom have a nobody knew what Zoom was. I know. And neverone was like, Skype? Where's Skype these days? Nowhere. Beats me. Who cares? Yeah, it's all about Zoom now. It doesn't matter. But as far as you know, think as we're thinking about slow times, we're thinking about, you know, pandemic is fresh on our mind, but the this recession that people are talking about, there are things that we still can do that aren't necessarily, you know, you know if our advice is of focus on raising your prices and and take new pictures for your website. Don't do it the whole time.

unknown 38:51

Right.

SPEAKER_00 38:52

Raise your prices every day of a pandemic.

unknown 38:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:56

And take pictures of yourself while you're doing it. Every day, take new pictures. No, of course. I mean, there's only so much you can do there. But what what we'll say about this is this is why and where it becomes really important to have been focused on those needle-moving meetings, those meetings that really propel you forward instead of focusing so much on the little things. We talked about this in a previous episode where we in the first year outside of the COVID pandemic, we're really focused on only making as much money as we could. It didn't matter if it was quote unquote the right kind of money. It was as much as we could because we had almost gone out of business and we were trying to make sure that we were doing everything in our possible to earn as much as we possibly could. And we've been in situations where we've had an unexpected slow time after a season of not prioritizing margin. We've also been in an unpredictable slow time after a season of having just prioritized our margin. It is so much easier to weather the storm of a slow season unexpectedly after you've just had a history of taking your margin seriously. It is night and day. And that's something that we can do to prepare for an unexpected slow time, is by operating from a place where we're taking our margin seriously. That's kind of like our insurance policy as business owners. Like, I know we don't, we're self-employed. We don't really have, like, we're not going to get a severance if we get laid off. We're not going to, you know, do some of these things that are, you know, normal, commonplace in in major corporations, but we can set ourselves up to be in a slow time and not feel like the sky is falling. To be in a slow time and you're like, man, I'm really glad we were so serious about what we were charging and we weren't focused on cutting the prices down on everything all the time. At the end of the day, there's only you can only do so much. There's only so much you can do. But there are things that are in your control to help kind of lessen the blow of what an unexpected slow time can feel like. I think overall, the takeaway most regulars are gonna have from listening today is the whole razor prices thing. I I have a feeling that's something that is gonna feel very close to home. And I I do have a lot of uh expectation that our experience in talking with custom clothiers and other business owners is probably accurate across the board where most people are way overdue for a price increase and they just for whatever reason haven't done it. Well, I know the reason. I don't want to lose customers, right? Right. That's true. That's the reason. And we've already we've already kind of put that to bed, haven't we? You already are. You already are. Most businesses, especially small businesses, which is really you regulars out there, you're running small businesses. Your margin business, you're not a volume business. Margin businesses have to be very strategic about what they charge. They have to make sure they're taking their margin seriously. And as life continues to get more expensive, your prices need to continue to go up to secure and make sure that you're taking your margin seriously. And when unexpected slow times come, because they will, you know, what is it that they say the only thing that is uh predictable is unpredictability, or the only thing that is certain is uncertainty. You got me. Have you never heard that before? I mean, it's so sounding vaguely familiar, but I think I don't think you're I don't think you're close enough to it. It's kind of like when you misspell a word, a word so badly that the autocorrect doesn't understand what you're trying to say. That's not how this is feeling. Well, every time I try to write maintenance, oh my gosh, they're like, they're like, are you trying to say Montana? The only thing certain in business is uncertainty. I I think that's a phrase. Autocorrect is like, I don't know, dude. You're on your own. But it's true. Uncertainty is gonna happen. Things that are unexpected will happen. So what are we supposed to do? We know these these things are coming. We know that this is gonna happen. So let's do what we know we need to do. Let's let's put ourselves in a position where we can weather that storm because there is going to be something on the other side, assuming you make it to the other side. And that's one of the things that was so hard to watch in COVID specifically, is these businesses closing. And they're not closing five months in. They're closing two weeks in. Yeah. And you know they're not, they're operating just with without any cash reserves. It's these historically low margin businesses like restaurants, they're hit because they don't operate with healthy margins. There was a barber we used to see sometimes, and it was the first week of the pandemic. And you I mean, you remember how that went. Of course, every nobody was allowed to go to work and there was all this. But he was closed like within a week or two and was blaming the pandemic. And I remember thinking to myself, even then, I don't think that you can really blame the pandemic if you, you know, basically take a week off and you're out of business. That to me means maybe margins were a little slim. Margins were slim. He was running what should have been a high margin business like it was a high volume business. He was running for volume. He always needed more, more haircuts, more haircuts, more haircuts, more haircuts. I'm barely making anything. I'm barely paying my bills. But as long as I keep getting more and more and more and more and more, my bills are paid. But as soon as you don't continue to get more and more and more, you're not able to pay your bills. And that's what we can do as business owners. And in the slow times, there are some of them that are predictable. Lean in, enjoy it, do the strategic things, take new pictures, freshen up your website, do your CEO stuff that you have to do, go to the bank, do your talk. Yeah. Have the tax conversations. Take a vacation, plan a trip. But in those unpredictably slow times, make sure that you've been doing the right things time after time after time, sale after sale after sale, client after client after client, so that it doesn't put you in a position where you have to operate in a panic mode and you have to cut the prices and you have to start attracting discount buyers because discount buyers aren't going to help your business grow. That's my favorite band, Panic at the Discount. They rock. Panic at the Discount. Is that one more time? Thanks for the memories. Is that Panic at the Discount? I don't know. Yeah, I think so. We'll we'll go with it. We'll just go with that. Listen, regulars, if you're a custom clothier and you're looking for uh a boost, you want to become the top clothier in your market, you want to be truly a luxury custom clothier. Most custom clothier aren't. If you want to be, we have very rare, short window of time for you to join our custom clothier mastermind. It's called Luxury Clothier Collective, and we're accepting three more clothier or closing registration uh enrollment on the day before Thanksgiving, whichever comes first. I don't know which is going to come first. So whichever comes first is it. And if you've already missed it, you can go ahead and join the wait list. But we're looking for a few more people. We wanna we wanna fill out the list a little bit. We're working one-on-one with custom clothiers uh from around the country and we're seeing some really great results. So if you want one-on-one mentorship with us and some other custom clothiers looking to experience running a high-end luxury business, working smarter, not harder, then this could be the moment you've been waiting for. I mean, we just last week talked through this idea of discount versus value add with one of the one of the members. We did. He was in a situation where he had a client coming in who had worked with him in the past, who was expecting old price points, and he was trying to figure out how do I get this guy into my current price points? So we approached it with a value add proposition as opposed to a discount proposition. We gave him, we gave him not only that, we gave him some scripts and it worked. So if you're looking, if that sounds good to you, then then we have a spot for you. I think I mean by the time this airs, I hope we still do. Uh, but if we don't, you can join the wait list and you'll be the first to know it if and when enrollment opens up again. It's all it's very short windows of time. You can't just join whenever you want. You it's got to be an enrollment period. And we don't have any immediate plans to open enrollment again. So if this is feeling like it could be the right fit for you, you do need to act fast. And if you miss it, you miss it. And uh, you know, it is what it is, but you can always join the wait list. We'd love to have you. If you miss it, have fun in your valley. I remember that was one thing that if you miss it, see you later, peek. Never gonna have another peek. Yeah, enjoy the view from down here. Uh, I remember when we are in this, we'll end on this. Uh, this horrible, horrible networking group in which we met the tax accountant who embezzled from us. Uh, they they said, you know, listen, if you don't want to renew your membership, that's fine. That's fine. What happens is people join this group and they're so busy and they say, I'm too busy to to attend the meetings for the group, and then they leave. And guess what? Their business dries up. I remember we were brand new. We were brand new full time. We were broke, and I remember sitting there being like, bullshit. And the funny thing was, is our whole group was waiting for one of us to bite the dust. We sent an email and we said, Hey, you know what? We initiated it. Yeah, we said, Hey, we're out, it's not working, we're not renewing. It's not me, it's you. And after that, it was like ding, ding, ding. And everyone was like, Me too, me too, me too. A different kind of the OG Me Too. The original Me Too. Yeah, everyone Me Too's us. It was crazy. We got Me Too'd so hard out of that group. Uh to the editors, let's not take this clip out of context. That could, that could be damaging. Uh, but that that's it for your appointment today. Uh, something to think about as you enter into hopefully, uh hopefully it's not a slow season, but if you're anything like us, you are entering into a slow season. Well, for many of you who aren't in the same industry as we are, you're probably heading into a really busy one with the holidays. Holidays do have a tendency to be super busy for people. So everyone who uh talks to us about our business, they're like, oh man, I bet you're slammed for the holidays. And I'm like, nope. All right, guys, thanks so much for uh for tuning in. Your appointment's over. We'll see you at your next one. And that's that. Today's appointment is over. This has been appointment only. Your time is valuable, and we're very appreciative of you spending some of it with us. Thanks for showing up. Thanks for being on time, thanks for being receptive to what we have to say. And if you have a question you'd like us to answer here on appointment only, please shoot us a DM. We would love to hear from you. We would also appreciate a five star review. We'd love if you'd follow along. Follow us here however you're hearing this, and follow us on Instagram at appointment onlypods.