Why Slow Seasons Are Your Secret Growth Period (DO THIS NOW)

If I had zero income for 3 months, could I continue to stay open? It was kind of like an emergency fund. Work on the things that you don't normally get to work on during the busy seasons. It takes 7 hours of people watching you and hanging out with you to trust you. Not only that, they need to see you in 4 different places. I mentioned doing things that you don't normally get to do. One of these things is building your brand online. I think it is the most valuable thing that you can invest in for your business.

Hello everybody and welcome to the Brand Builders Podcast. We're so glad you're here and watching. Today we're talking about slow seasons.

Slow seasons. Everybody has a slow season. If you're a business owner, you've had a slow season and you're probably going to have more slow seasons. And I've had plenty of them. Usually our slow season for Howdy stuff is from November to about mid-January.

The holidays, isn't that coincidental?

But for some businesses, for some businesses, like we worked with the business a couple weeks ago, the holidays is their biggest time of the year.

Yeah.

So like, what are they doing the rest of the year to get prepared for their busy season? So that's what we're going to be talking about today. And, um, I don't know, what is your opinion on a slow season?

My opinion?

Yeah, what is your take on it?

Slow seasons, they refine you, they push you, they strengthen you, your faith walk. They squeeze you hard. But oh my goodness, I look back on so many slow seasons that we've gone through and we've come out so much stronger and trusting each other more, trusting in the Lord more. Um, and so opinions of a slow season, they're so rough. But I also get really excited and fired up because I know something's coming on the other side. Usually it's a season, it's not forever.

10 times out of 10, something bad— or I say bad, but like, that's literally the most I think about the big picture of things, and whenever I think, oh, I'm having a difficult time, then I literally think about the people all around the world who don't have food, and I'm like, okay, chill out, Darren.

Yeah, it's not that bad.

We live in the United States of America. We have a home that we bought. We both have cars. We eat food.

Like, we eat food. Hey, you can meal prep hardcore on a budget. Like $5 Sam's Club rotisserie chickens and broccoli go a long way. So slow season, even if like we're laughing a lot, but they are really challenging.

They are challenging, and they're time that you need your, your people around you to encourage you. You need your spouse to encourage you.

Yes.

And it's there to refine you.

Yeah.

Um, and, and it's more than just like a financial slow season. Yes, if you don't have business, then you don't make as much money, but it's just for a season.

So let's dive into this. Let me be the question asker today because I have several questions for you. How do you, how do you find yourself being proactive when you know, like, you looked at the years past and you say, okay, obviously, like, these months are a lot slower than others. How do you take that information? How do you take those experiences and be proactive for the year to come? What are some things you've done?

I didn't realize that this was the slow season. This is the first year that I had even planned for it as far as financially.

We learned from last season. Talk a little bit about last season.

So the last slow season that we had was at the end of 2024.

Yep.

And I realized that, hey, nobody really cares about making that many videos or signing big deals during this time. And so we had just bought a house. We put all our money towards the down payment of our house, started renovating it, did a bunch of renovations. I was like, boom, business is booming. And then literally the next month we were in the negatives as far as the business goes. Yeah, and that was an eye-opener to me. And then it was a drought for the next 2 months. I was like, what are we doing? We literally just bought a house, did all these renovations, are about to have a baby.

Yeah, we had found out we were pregnant around the same time. We found out we were pregnant like right after we found our house, and it was like, what? That was not technically, quote unquote, exactly how we thought it was going to go.

So I went through a mental, like, battle for those 3 months.

Yeah, like literally losing hair.

Losing hair. Like, yes, it was not good. So now, like, after doing that, I've learned, hey, this doesn't define your worth, and this doesn't define who you are and the success of your business. And the success of your business, whether you make a million bucks or whether you make $100. That does not define you as a person. Once I figured that out, and I knew it, it's just being in it and working so many hours and trying to make this thing go. Whenever it doesn't work, it's— it is defeating. It's very defeating.

Yeah. So taking that, like, walking through that season, what do you feel like you've implemented this year to push you into, like, okay, this quote-unquote dry season is approaching as a business owner, what can I do?

So whenever that happened, 2025 got here, I was thinking in my head, how can I prepare for this in the future when it happens again? Because it is going to happen again. Um, every month is not going to be the best month that we've ever had. We literally went from the best month we had to the worst month we had ever had. Yeah, in one, like, in 30 days difference.

Yeah.

And so thinking forward, I was like, okay, we're not doing that again. That was torturous. How can we prepare for those slow seasons so whenever the good seasons are here, we can be thoughtful and mindful and be good money managers and stewarding it well. And so what I've basically done this year, and I can do better, like we all have room to grow, and next year I'm going to try to do better.

For sure.

But we have the move of the studios going on, so that costs a lot of money. We have to pay ourselves, costs some money. We have to buy all of the equipment for the new space.

Which we're so excited about. It's gonna be awesome.

We also had to prepare for— I was expecting, okay, if I had zero income for 3 months, could I continue to stay open? It was kind of like an emergency fund.

Yeah.

If you ever listen to Dave Ramsey, as funny as that is and how often we make fun of it, but like I told Darren, I would rather punch a kitten than listen to him. You love kittens.

I—

so anyways, so having that just fun there, honestly, beyond the slow seasons, like even in the good seasons, having that fun there has brought a lot of peace. That's the financial thing. So like, hey, put aside money.

Yeah, prepare, be intentional, be ready. Yeah.

So at any given moment— it's not if, it's when you're going to have a dry season, when you have a slow season, like you are prepared.

Yeah.

And this is, this is how you don't go into the spiral of not knowing if you're going to be able to stay open for another month as a business, especially in the early years. I mean, we've talked about it before, but the first year we were open, I made negative $6,000 because I had to buy gear. I had to do— figure out how to do everything. Yeah, didn't know how to price things as a service-based business, didn't know how to really market myself effectively to where people knew about us. So that's the financial side of things. Another thing that I've learned to do is to work on the things that you don't normally get to work on during the busy seasons. So that's cool.

Talk about it.

Whether that's self-development, work on yourself, work on your character, work on your knowledge, your wisdom by reading books, taking courses, doing all kinds of that.

Sorry, skrt, pause. This man in the last, I don't know, 3 months has bought more books from Barnes Noble than I have ever seen him. I mean, through every season of us knowing each other, I have never seen him read and dive in and seek knowledge and wisdom, not only from like the Lord— that's a daily pursuit I see you do, and it's so encouraging. Every morning he wakes up and he's in the— well, recently it's been in my office, um, in the morning with Bible study. And then like every single evening, like, he's got a book in the living room, in the bedroom, and everywhere. Like there's a book. So ditto, like, not ditto, that's not a good word.

Applause to you.

Props to you. Thank you, Darren. Oh, mom brain. So I see that actively happening in your life.

So work on that. And it has been a little bit slower these last few months. It's been busy, but it's been slow compared to normal.

Well, and Darren and I are also like— perks of having your own business, but it's also really challenging. We've been able to like go see family and like enjoy time with Libby and like do all the things. And also, you know, so I feel like it's kind of been nice.

Yeah, it's been good, but always trying to get better no matter what it is. Within this season, it's been drawing closer to the Lord and leaning on him more than the success of what I'm doing here on earth, not letting that define me, as well as learning practical business things. I went to business school and really didn't teach me how to run a business at all. So I've been having to go and find all these other resources, and I've learned a lot more within the last few months and with the experience of trying to implement these things. So read, listen to podcasts, watch other people doing what you're doing, try to figure out how to do it better. And then also market yourself. This is the season where for us in our situation, we're always filming other people. We can take this opportunity in this time that we have to film ourselves, to do our own marketing, work on our own branding, double down. I mean, we do throughout the year, we're always marketing, but doubling down and making sure like this this is something that we don't normally get to work on, so we're gonna do it right now. That makes sense.

No, yeah, that makes perfect sense.

But that's my take on slow seasons. And then once the fast seasons kick off— oh, and taxes too.

Oh yeah, I don't even know about those. I don't want to know about those. I just hear him have silent tears.

Yeah, I'm like, yeah, we just paid the government this much money this month.

It is gut-wrenching, but it's part of life. It's what you got to do. You got to get over it.

Hey, really quick, I wanted to let you guys know about a 5-day challenge. It's called 5-Day Build Loop Video Challenge that we put together exactly for you, because if you're watching this, you're probably an entrepreneur, a business person, or a creator who's looking to monetize. And so if that's you, there's going to be a link in the description. We're going to be going over all of the things that I've learned and took away over the last 4 or 5 years to figure out how to make content work for your business and not against your business. And so for us, this is how we get about 90% of our clients within our business, and it's 10x, sometimes 100x our engagement and views and even leads. Same exact thing goes for all of our clients. And so if you're interested in this, click the link below and apply today. There's only a limited number of spots because it is one-on-one. And so hope to see you in the challenge. Let's get back to the episode. So just being prepared for these things is helpful. And it also, it's given me time to kind of have room to cast a vision because when we're in the day-to-day of running a business, doing everything, being a family, a father, being a husband, it's easy to lose sight of where we're going sometimes because we're just focused on the next task, the next task. Oh, I got to do this today, I gotta do this today. Whenever it's a little bit slower, it allows you to zoom out and really dial in on where it is we're going to be going. So vision casting— I've been spending a lot of time vision casting for what the next year looks like, the next 3 years look like, and even the next 10 years.

And I think, I don't know, I think vision casting is like, it's part of why we do what we do. Like, it's exciting. Like, if you don't have vision and you're not constantly looking forward, don't you get bored? Like, it's boring. And so I love that. That's like when we were talking about our new studio and our new space, and that's like literally looking like right in front of you at this point, but it snuck up on us. We were like, oh, we're moving in our new space. No, we're like, that's next week. Like, it's crazy. But like How exciting was that to like see the space and like we get to design it, which I'm always really excited about. You get to design it and then you start thinking about, okay, what kind of people are going to come in here? What kind of, you know? And so I think vision casting is so fun. It's so exciting.

It's fun. And it's also— it feels risky too.

Oh, but that's fun. Us adrenaline junkies like it.

It's fun for some people. Yeah, I think it is fun to an extent.

You're talking about the girl that loves to go to auctions.

But it's also— yeah, but it's also like, this is our livelihood. This is how we pay our bills. This is how we support our family. This is how our daughter eats. And so whenever it's magnified to that scale, it becomes a little bit harder to make those decisions. You spend more time calculating those decisions. And with the last few years of experience that I do have, I feel like I can make higher quality and higher educated calculations on what may or may not work. So it's easier to do, which is why the experience is greater than anything else you can do is just to go out and do it. But it is a risk. We were in the same season 2 years ago whenever we signed the lease in this studio, and I didn't have the cash flow to afford it. I was gonna make the studio pay for itself. That was my plan. I didn't know if it was gonna work. If nobody would have come and used the studio, then we would have been shut down already. But this is another scenario where But yeah, exactly. This is another scenario where I was trying to vision cast in June whenever we had our baby. It was very difficult for me to do. Like, I was so focused in on like, well, yeah, you literally becoming a father, which is fine. And that lasted for a couple months, but I was just going in circles in my head. I'm like, what am I doing? What am I gonna do? And not that the business was doing bad or anything, it's just like I, I couldn't see further than like a month out at that time. Now during a slower season, we've kind of adjusted to being parents. We have got this new space under contract, I guess we leased it, but it's a 3-year lease. And so now it's another risk that we're taking. It's double the rent. We've talked about it before, and this is just a season that we're in. So sorry if you get tired of hearing about the new studio. So this is another risk that we're taking, and if it works, great. I believe it will work. Every— all my calculations, if they are correct, and if the Lord—

okay, yeah, I was about to say, hold up. I'm just saying the freedom in surrendering all the fear that you have to the Lord is crazy because let's see if I can put this into words because I'm really struggling to find them nowadays. Um, literally, like, I used to be so afraid of investing in something or spending money here or taking a leap here or taking a leap there. But through these, like, we're talking about, we keep saying the word seasons. Through them, literally the Lord has completely provided. Yeah, it may be slow. Yeah, it may be tight, but there hasn't been one time we haven't been taken care of. And seeing your walk with God, Darren, as your wife— and I don't know if you want to call me a business partner, if you do, that just—

wow, you are a business partner.

Wow, so meaningful.

You hear all of the problems of the business.

Yeah, I'm your, your business bestie. But, um, I like that I'm gonna get a shirt, business bestie. Anyways, getting to see you take a vision that God gave you and then completely, like, every single time— yeah, it may be hard, it's not perfect all the time, but seeing you take that fear or that hesitation or the risk and just trusting God with that has been so cool because the Lord has— he's been so faithful and he's taken care of us. And so I think it's healthy to take risks. Because if you don't, like, you're gonna be stuck in the same doggone spot forever.

Life is boring. You never grow.

Yeah. And God, I think he wants us to do— like, I think he wants us to take— I literally, talking about the story in the Bible where they walk on water and they're so scared, I think about that is so relatable to talk about in business because, like, all of the disciples were standing in the boat. They were in there and they were like, the storms are crazy. Like, I literally can't get out. There's no way. The waves are, like, overtaking us. Maybe business this seems like so wild and we're having to take all these risks and whatever. And God is so like— he's Jesus, he's so like stone cold. He walks out and he's like, like, what are y'all doing?

I said, step out of the boat, Peter.

Yeah, what are you doing? Like, why are you fearing? You don't think I have you? And it was like that questioning. Oh, that would have made me like— my stomach.

And then Peter starts walking on water and then He starts freaking out. Yeah, and he starts—

he was walking and floating, and then he— yeah, the fear and whatever. So I think you can like parallel that. There's so many stories and wisdom that you can learn from the word of God, but that's a cool story to compare, you know, with your business. It's like, if God's given you the vision— we talk about it all the time— like, walk in obedience, take the step, take the risk, and he's gonna hold you up.

Yeah, during these slow seasons I mentioned doing things that you don't normally get to do. One of these things is building a— your brand online. I think it's important that we touch on that because that's why we're here, because we've built our brand online, and that's how people find us, and that's what we do for others. We help other people utilize this, and I think it is the most valuable thing that you can invest in for your business. Yeah, is going all in on building your brand online.

And we talk about it all the time. Darren jokes, but like these businesses that I follow, there's like a core— like I can think of some businesses that I follow, their clothing boutiques, and they have me wrapped around their pinky toe, man. Like I know their brand. As soon as a post comes up, I don't even look at the profile picture. I know who they are because they're so constant and they're always out there. So if you think your video— oh, I'm posting too much, like people are tired of me. No, like literally that's how you build those relationships and all that. And so like, I think of that, like we talk, you know, brand builders, whatever. What does it look like having your brand in these seasons? It's more important than ever to put yourself out there.

Every sales call that I've had this last month, it starts off with, man, I see you everywhere.

You're like, good, heard that.

Like, sorry, but I'm not sorry.

Yeah, that's what we're doing.

That's intentional.

Yes.

And being in the market that we're in, posting more than everybody else is not extremely difficult. It's not easy. Yeah, but it's— if you do it right, there's ways that you can do it efficiently for sure. And so building your brand, take some time, think about who are you serving in this season. Has it changed? Like, it's changed for us multiple times. What services are you offering this season? How are you going— how are you going to reach these people who need your services? And so think about these things. Think about the words that you want to communicate through your content, through your videos. Be very specific and intentional with how you word things and how you package things. All of this is going to trickle down, and by the time they get to buying your stuff, they should feel like they know you and trust you already. So fun stat I like to pull out for, um, selling things online, whether that's a service or product, it doesn't matter. It takes 7 hours of somebody watching your content and hanging out with you. This is according to Google, by the way. It takes 7 hours of people watching you, hanging out with you, to trust you enough to buy something from you. Not only that, they need to see you in 4 different places. Fun fact. So they need to see you on YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, any of the 4 platforms.

And they just get me on Facebook and Instagram. Yeah, I don't have time for TikTok. I did buy this jacket off TikTok. Somebody— I don't even— I didn't even know how to get to TikTok shop, and somebody was like, oh yeah, I got this jacket off TikTok shopping. Anyways, I'm chasing squirrels. Sorry.

No, you're good.

Get out there. 4 places.

4 places. But the more you can get out there, the more they'll start to know who you are, and they— the more that they trust you. So by the time they get to talking to you or inquiring about your services or product, there really shouldn't be a ton of questions or doubt at that point.

That's good.

Um, if you put out good content, good case studies saying, hey, we actually did this, here's proof. Yesterday I put out— I made a couple story posts. Um, basically I was just at my desk looking at the YouTube analytics for a couple channels that we run, and one of them was for our client, and he's gotten about 30,000 extra views in the last month on his YouTube channel since we started working.

I love that YouTube channel.

That's awesome. It's awesome. And we're not putting out like hundreds of videos per month. This is just once or twice a week putting out some good quality content. I also showed the stats, like I flipped the camera around and showed the stats, like, hey, this is what we're doing. This is like actual proof. And I've gotten some good response from, from that type of post. Also showing your personality. Don't always make it just business.

Well, and I think that creates an eagerness to the customer. Like, I don't know about you, but like whenever I've been following somebody for a couple months or whatever and I've never met them before, like I feel like I'm building a relationship with them just by watching them, like through their posting and through their branding. And so whenever you do, like whether you have a meeting or you have like, hey, let's meet up, we have some business ideas to go over together, I feel like there's this eagerness of like Wow, like I've been watching this person, I'm getting to know them, like it's time, like I mean, I'm— and let's get the ball rolling.

So let me ask you this. I've been reading a book called Oversubscribed by Daniel Priestley. Go read it if you haven't. So with these brands that you're talking about, this just reminded me, with these brands, if they were to put out a limited edition product, say a boutique says, hey, we have 10 of these— I don't know, what do you buy at a boutique? Jackets?

I don't buy everything.

We have 10 of these jackets in stock. We're— they're going on sale next Friday at 8 AM. We only have 10.

It's in my Google Calendar then.

It's in your Google Calendar. You know you're expecting it. You know there's limited— there's limited supply. And if they have 20,000 followers on Instagram, you know there's a lot more people who want to buy that. Yeah, there's a perfect example of this.

Um, a couple weeks ago, one of my favorite artists that I follow— she's incredible, out of Fredericksburg— um, she does a drop every now and then. And I hardly ever talk to you about shopping things, like, ever. I mean, wives, come on, we kind of keep it on the low-low.

Anyway, just on the big statement.

Yeah, on the big— it's fine. Um, anyways, this artist that I follow out of Fredericksburg, she does a drop every, like, year for Christmas, and it's only, like, 15 paintings. They're really small on, like, Anyways, and I every year have missed it and I've been devastated, but it makes me even more excited and ready for the next one. And so it's like, it creates that sense too.

They make you wait. So this is the whole thing with an oversubscribed brand. They make you wait. They don't rush things. There's a limited supply of things. So like going into the new studio, we're only going to have I think I set aside 6 slots for podcast members. We're not going to go above that.

Yeah, which I think is great as a business owner, because, you know, hey, like right now this is what we can fit as far as scheduling goes. Like, there's only so much time in a day, there's only so many days in a week, and like realistically, like, that's our boundary right now. That's where we can go.

So supply— it all goes back to supply and demand. If there's a lot of people who want to start podcasts, then we can charge more. Yeah, for those, and, and do fewer spots if we wanted, for sure. But she had— that artist has an oversubscribed brand, so whenever she releases something, you've waited a whole year for it, you're going to, to buy it. Yeah, same thing, uh, Apple does this a lot.

Of course they do.

They have a new product come out, they make people wait in a line outside the store, they make them wait, they announce it and then they don't even let people buy it for another month. So it just builds up this anticipation. Yeah, pre-order. And so it makes— it gives people that feeling of eagerness and like, oh, I'm excited about what's going on, even though you're spending a lot of money. Like, they don't care, they just want the product.

Yeah.

Um, anyways, that was a sidetrack thing, but Go in on your brand, become oversubscribed, and your business will flourish.

So slow seasons, we love them, we hate them, we grow from them. We hope you learned a little bit today from our story and some of the ones we've walked through and feel a little more equipped going into one. Hopefully you don't have one, um, soon, but you probably will, unfortunately.

But, um, with that being said, I want to invite you— there's going to be a couple links in the description. One is to our school community, it's is called the Brand Builders Community, and this is full of other entrepreneurs and business owners just like you who are trying to grow your brand online. It's a free community. Feel free to join there. Um, and we also are putting on a 5-day challenge. So this is a 5-day Build With Video challenge, one-on-one, me and you. We get together 45 minutes a day and we basically go over from the beginning, hey, how do we come up with ideas for content? How do we utilize it and leverage it to create customers from these people and these views. So that way if you get a million views on a video, you have a way to actually leverage that and turn it into actual cash for your business. So this can be huge.

I mean, and the success from those has been awesome. I've just heard testimonies from Darren as far as people calling or just saying, hey dude, like, you don't realize how much I've learned today in this 45 minutes because it's not just general knowledge, like It's very niched down for that person.

Yeah, it's customized for you to an extent. And obviously I just want to help people, and this is one of the ways that I can help funnel them. And I'm using content to funnel the people who are actually interested in taking a next step to do so. Plus you're getting 5 days of free coaching, so win-win for everybody. But yeah, leave a comment down below. What type of video do you want to see next? What do you want us to talk about? What are some slow seasons that you're going through, and what are some of the good seasons? Let us know in the comments down below. Make sure to subscribe, and we'll see you guys in the next one.