Seasonal Business Strategies: How to Thrive During the Off-Season

What should seasonal businesses do in the off-season? So I got a great question from one of my loyal YouTube viewers, love you guys, Luis Patrick Rancourt, who wrote in to say, good video, passion trumps everything, and if it leaves, don't fight it and follow it to another venture. How do you handle a more seasonal type of venture when preparing for the off-season? Is it better to go dormant or to make periodic but less frequent updates? "Thank you Evan for all you do. Thank you for sharing even the most personal stuff, but it made sense in this video. You are incredible with your openness." Hey, you know what? Thank you for the great feedback. If there's one thing I've learned over the years of creating the videos and connecting with people, that when you can share your personal stories and you are open, they're much more willing to like you, trust you, want to work with you, want to subscribe to your channel, all that fun stuff. So now to answer your question, great question. What I want you to adopt is this mantra: hustle while you wait. Okay, this is what successful people do, not just entrepreneurs, not just people who have seasonal businesses. You hustle while you wait. You're not waiting on anybody or anything. You're not handing your fate, your destiny, your success over to anybody else except yourself. Okay, not Mother Nature, not a customer, not an investor. You're not waiting on a client to call you back. You're not waiting on an investor or a media person to connect with you after you send a proposal. You're not waiting on anybody. You're hustling, okay? You're creating opportunities, and while you're waiting for some to come back, you're creating more opportunities. That's what successful people do. So you apply this to a seasonal business. You've just gone crazy working really hard, say you're a summertime business. Okay, summer is ending, we're coming into winter. What do you do? You're not just sitting back and relaxing. You're hustling, creating more opportunities. I'm thinking about baseball now because it's the World Series when I'm making this video. The Blue Jays, my Blue Jays, are out, I'm so upset. What do players do? Okay, what do the best athletes do in the offseason? They're not just going on vacation, you know, sipping martinis, hanging out at the beach all day. The best athletes, the ones who have the most success, they're hustling, okay? They can't play their game that they love, so they're out working hard, they're training, you know, they're healing, they're eating right, they're watching video, they're trying to get an edge. Maybe they go to play you know, in a different league, Arizona League or down in South America. They're off working and getting better and working on their craft so that when the season comes back again, they're ready to go. You apply this to the business world, so many companies in your position are so busy in operations mode during the on-season that off-season is a great time to do marketing. Here's an example: think about all the different types of people you could partner with, all the different People who are related to your industry, who don't do what you do but are related, they're also seasonal. During the season, they're super busy. They may not have time to talk to you, but now it's slower for them too. That's an opportunity to create partnerships, to reach out, to market. You can create your materials, you can work on it, right? So it's getting better. So you have two strategies. Which one you pick really just depends on what you're feeling more excited about, because both can work. Number 1 is start preparing for next season, and that's exactly what we just talked about, right? You're working hard, you're doing your marketing, you're connecting with your customers, you're creating new materials, you're doing more research, you're doing basically everything that you can do except the stuff that requires Mother Nature to be nice because it's the off-season, right? You're working hard, getting ready for the next season. Number 2 is start something else, and this is isn't typically a strategy I recommend, but if you're feeling it, if this is where your love is at, if you want to do something else, then do something else that's also seasonal for the wintertime, right? And what you might want to think about is, well, so I know you love trail running during the summer from previous videos. What do you do in the winter? Do you go snowboarding? Do you like to, you know, race the dogs? Do you like to— I don't know what it is. You go cross-country skiing? What do you do? Like, what's a personal passion of yours? How do you keep this running thing? Do you do weight winter running, what is it, right? That could become another business, right? And it could be a sister business to what you're currently doing, or it could be part of an entire business. If it's, if it's going to be winter trail running, then you have it in there as well, because the people who are following you in your summer business, a lot of them are going to be interested in your winter business as well, because they're, they have the same passion, right? If you love cross-country skiing or you love winter running, a good chunk of them are going to love that too, or at least be willing to try it out. And you can share that information, resource, knowledge, right? Not too many people will do this path, right? You look at athletes again, most people in the offseason, they're getting ready for the next season, the best ones. The lazy ones, they aren't. They're chilling, they're relaxing, they're taking it easy, and then they feel it in spring training and at the beginning of the season. They're slumping. I don't want that to be you. I want you coming out of the gate, first day of the season, whack, you're smacking home runs because you've been working so hard in the offseason. But some of them will then go do something else, right? Deion Sanders, the offseason he played football. Bo Jackson, the offseason he played football too, right? They're going off pursuing another passion, they're still getting better, and then come season time again, they're ready to go play baseball. So if you can combine another passion that you can bring some of your customers with, then it's another way to stay busy. But man, do not wait, okay? That's the worst thing you can do. Don't wait on Mother Nature, don't wait on, on Don't wait on customers, don't wait on investors, don't wait on media. We are not in the waiting game, okay? We're in the opportunity creation game. We hustle while we wait. So pick one of those options, but make sure you keep hustling. Believe. For those of you watching, like the video. You can subscribe to the channel, see more just like this. Thank you so much for watching. I'll see you soon. If you want the real goods, I share my best advice for entrepreneurs every week in my newsletter. Click the link below to check it out. It's free.

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