Business Trends and Dry January

For every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction. And I think that is the same, you know, with these, the people who go dry in January, whether they overindulge in December or they overindulge in February, my, my experience in most of the people who do these kind of extreme things, they wind up overindulging. It doesn't inform a new identity because it is so extreme.

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Hey, everybody.

Welcome to another episode of Business Lunch. You guys don't get to see all the behind the scenes stuff, but we just, I have for the past, I don't know, 15 minutes been trying to start all of the computers and logins and screens and lights and everything. And Ryan has patiently sat there. So I'm going to say that, Ryan, thank you so much for being here today because I would have left, I think after all of that, you would.

Have failed if people only got to see behind the scenes of just what an absolute crap show we are. More times than not, I feel like they would be less than. They'd be like, you know what? I can do this. I can do this too. I don't think they realize just how low we are setting the bar, but here we are.

So we are in January as we record this having just turned over the first of the year. And there's a trend that's been catching on pretty well over the last few years that runs an entire month. And so I thought it'd be interesting to talk about dry January. So dry January, everybody gives up alcohol of all sorts during the month of January, it's a significant portion of the year. And so how does that affect your business? If you happen to be in a business of serving alcohol, it might be pretty significant. And if you don't have any alcohol component to your business, then are there ways to take advantage of it? So I wanted to. I personally have opted out of dry January, so I've not yet opted out of it by having an opportunity to drink. But I know we're headed to Las Vegas in a couple of days for our traffic and conversion summit, where I intend to violate the heck out of dry January. Ryan, what are your thoughts on all of this?

So I want to talk about the business side of it, but can we just address, like, can we chat for a little bit about, like, I'd love to know, like, what is your take on these things, like dry January, just from a personal perspective.

My, my personal perspective is like, I know a lot of people in the hospitality industry and they do it to prove to themselves that they can, that. That they're not out of control. And I knew a couple of sommeliers that would, from time to time, regardless of dry January, basically say, I'm not going to drink for a month. Just to show because I drink so much in my job that I'm going to do that. I think for people like that, it, it makes sense, I guess, if you have, if you feel that you might be having an issue with alcohol, it's. It's a cool thing to be able to do. For me, I personally don't like extreme kinds of things like that. So to me, it's like, you know, how about if you just drank like two drinks a week? Or, you know what if you could be socially responsible instead of it being all or nothing? Which is also kind of how I go about setting goals these days. It used to be like, and I'm going to work out 17 hours a day, eight days a week, every week, right. For the next year. That's my goal. You know, that's not going to happen. So. So I try to find that reasonable moderate middle, but I think it can be good for people. I don't. For me personally, I think it's just too much to try to do that. And what if the once in a lifetime opportunity comes along and somebody says, ooh, I've got a bottle of 1900 Chateau Lafitte Rothschild, which we might have when you get over here, and I'm not going to get to drink that, because this is the opportunity for that.

And that So I don't, I don't.

Like it from that perspective. What are your, what are your thoughts?

Yeah, I mean, same as, I think similarly, if somebody wants to do something, I'm not going to tell them they shouldn't. So I'm, I'm speaking from my perspective alone, not knocking anybody who is doing it, but the people that I have seen do it. I found that one of two things happens like a lot of folks will because they are planning to do dry January, lose their ever loving minds in December. And it's sort of like, I mean, it's this whole idea of Mardi Gras, right? This idea of Fat Tuesday and the Mardi Gras, it's let's go nuts and have an absolute party because we're about to begin Lent. And I think that that kind of, I think that's really dangerous. Again, it's like I'm giving myself permission to make bad decisions today because I'm going to make a sacrificial decision tomorrow. And I just think from an identity perspective, you've got to pick like, are you somebody who drinks a lot? Are you somebody who doesn't drink at all? Are you somebody who's going to moderate yourself? So if you want to do this as kind of like a challenge yourself just to make sure that you don't have some kind of chemical dependency, fine. But when you use it as an excuse, then I see the same thing with, with people who do fitness type things or weight loss. It's okay, I'm going to start doing the gym next month or next week or next year so I can eat.

Whatever I want right now.

That is, I think when it becomes dangerous, when a future decision becomes a crutch or a reason to make bad decisions today, that's when you're not doing it for the right reasons. That's kind of the first bit. But I'm the same as you. Like, I'm really only interested in things that I know I can sustain because I just know me and I know the way most humans work. This idea of I'm going to do some extreme thing to kind of get myself primed and ready to sort of shortcut it. In the beginning it sounds like a good idea. I'm sure if one were to spreadsheet it out, it could make all time, you know, all kinds of sense. It just never works. Yeah, right. It never really works. For every action there's an equal and opposite reaction. And I think that is the same, you know, with these, the people who go dry in January Whether they overindulge in December or they overindulge in February. My, my experience in most people who do these kind of extreme things, they wind up overindulging. It doesn't inform a new identity because it is so extreme.

Agree, agree. Not a fan. So from a, from a business standpoint, just kind of looking, looking through it. So if you're, if your business happens to involve alcohol, if you're in hospitality, you own a bar, you own a nightclub, something like that, which I think is probably most of the people that watch us, then probably the opportunity is, is to embrace changes to your product line like mocktails. I bought because some of my friends are doing Dry January. I bought yesterday a couple of bottles of non alcoholic tequila that are going to come to the house and they're made with agave and stuff. It's just that they do it, they still age it. It still allegedly has all the kind of tastes and everything as tequila and it's good for mixing margaritas and stuff. So I thought it'd be interesting to try that. So I think it does create an opportunity for you to have product lines if you're in that business. But. But probably most of you are not actually in that. Despite the fact that Ryan and I are notorious nightclub fixtures like at all the major nightclubs across the world.

Yeah, we were always getting table service. That's just how we roll. It's what we love more than anything else is going to a really loud nightclub, spending way too much for usually garbage alcohol. All so that you can just scream in the ear of the person next to you so they can hear you. That's just my favorite.

Well, most of the enjoyment for me. I mean, I know we do the bottle service and everything, but we never take the VIP route. We like to wait in the. Because the networking opportunities are tremendous there. You know, so the. Now the. But one of the things that you can do is you could use it as an opportunity for social things and for networking. Speaking of networking. So think about that. There are anytime that you have people that are rallying around a common theme, trend, whatever. As much as it might be a TikTok challenge or something like that, it can also be something like Dry January. So irl. Right. If you're, if you're in the real world, you and you're looking for opportunities to network. To me this is a big one to have promotions and marketing around Dry January. Anything that would support it, anything that would align you with somebody, with anybody that's got an affinity for doing something like dry January. To me, it's a big opportunity. I think it's an opportunity for media acquisition as well, because there are several groups that are quite large that have been built up online and offline around dry January. So if you're looking to access a crowd, I don't know how specific, like maybe you can think that people that would like to stop drinking for a month would be people who normally drink. So maybe if I was selling those kinds of things, I'd want access to that audience. So I could say, hey, and we're putting together a heck of a party. Once this is over, I want to.

Be there for the rebound, in other words.

Right. You know, so from, from media opportunities, I think there's. There's something from like consulting for. We do talk with a lot of people about consulting for equity. I think it's an opportunity to maybe talk about, as a consultant, how you can integrate wellness programs into corporate clients and things like that. I think health and wellness people who are thinking about drinking are probably thinking somewhat about their health, no matter how remotely that may be connected to like, better living. So I think if you had yoga, self improvement, meditation, any kind of thing that is going to help you to be more well, then that's probably a good opportunity for you to tie that in to the promotion that's going around this month and do something with that. Do you have any ideas around those kinds of things?

Well, I think the broader kind of macro question and this. So this applies for hospitality bars, those kind of things for dry January, But I think this applies for all businesses. Anytime something like this, a trend like this emerges. So when a trend like this comes out, you've got to ask yourself, is this trend kind of pulling people away from my business or is it pushing them towards. Obviously, if you're like bars and hospitality, any type of alcohol, this is a trend that is pulling them away. Now, if it's pushing them towards, that's amazing. Like, those are tailwinds. Like, let's run, let's promote it, let's ride this wave as much as we can. But let's talk about what you do and how you respond if there is an active trend that is pulling people away from you. We saw this a lot with like when Atkins and low carb and no carb diets was a huge thing. You know, if you're a sandwich shop, if you're an Italian restaurant, like, what does that mean for you? And I think what you have there is you got three options. Option one is you could try to Go with the trend, which I think is what you're suggesting. So if you have, you know, if you got a bar and it's dry January, then this is where you're advertising. We've got mocktails for dry January and you want to bring in everybody who is in this trend. The other option is option to. The other extreme is you go completely against it and you say screw January our places for, for all the, for all the people who are still drinking and aren't afraid to admit it. The third option is you say nothing, speak nothing and start. Try to starve it of oxygen. Right. And I think the, and any one of those could be good. I think the answer is you got to know your customer, you gotta know your client. So if I've got kind of a, you know, fancy hoity toity bar that tends to skew a little bit younger people who are more engaged in social, they're more familiar with dry January, they're more likely to participate in dry January. Maybe we actually saw a dip last year and we know we're going to do it then obviously this is actively pulling people away. I want to make sure that I respond proactively. And so that's all the things you mentioned. We got to vocalize it. We can't pretend like we're doing nothing. We want to lean into that trend and invite those people into our world while still addressing their things. I would still want them to come into the building. I don't want them to get out of the habit of frequency, you know, frequenting our establishment. I think if you know that your trends are a bunch of people who are less likely to do that. Let's say you run like, you know, a dive bar, you know, and you got regulars coming in or you got a pub type thing and they're there.

For the networking you do in January.

Yeah, exactly. Like we're, we're going to do the opposite.

Yeah.

But there is something to be said for just kind of sitting out, saying nothing and seeing if, if it moves the needle. A lot of times we will overreact to trends because business owners, I think by and large are more plugged in to, to what people are talking about. You know, number one, we need to be. But number two, just the nature of entrepreneurship is we're listening to people, we're listening to problems, we're listening to our customers and we're responding to them.

Yeah.

So we're more likely to do that. By and large. I get probably most people don't know or don't care. And so I think if you're in doubt, you might be better just to do absolutely nothing, stay the course and see if it impacts you. And if it does positively or negatively, then lean into it a bit more away the next year. That's what I'd kind of say.

I think that makes a whole lot of sense, I think, from two things to think about too. One, from an AI standpoint, it's an opportunity to look into customer sentiment analysis and things like that. So if you're doing anything AI consulting wise or even for your own business, the fact that there are people that are interested in things like this is good to know. So that you can see, does it, does it make sense for your business. The other thing I wanted to mention is that one of the things that they talk about with respect to addiction, which alcoholism certainly falls into that category, is that when you're dealing with addicts or addictions, it's kind of a whack, a mole. And that one addiction frequently comes up and replaces the outgoing addiction. And so one of the positive things that you could do is if you've got anything that you could suggest to your audience that they could do to replace drinking, you know, hey, rather than going out to the bar tonight and having a drink, come on and learn how to play guitar or, you know, take this course in this, or let's go out for a drive, you know, at our car club or anything like that. What are the substitute habits and activities that you could create over a 30 day period? That could actually be a pretty cool promo and, and actually really help people as well to, to form a lasting habit. You can even rally around that, you know, hey, why make it just January? Do you want to be healthy just one month of the year or do you want to be healthy the entire year? The best thing you can do is find new cool things to do. One of the most fun things to do is come to our book club. Right. Whatever it is. That, that to me would be a good potential way to market as well.

So just lots of thoughts.

Any, any closing thoughts, Ryan?

Yeah, I think one of the hardest things in the world is to ask consumers to establish a new habit that will benefit you. Right? And so it's, it's always so much easier to lean into existing consumer trends and habits. And that's why location and retail matters, right? Because somebody is less likely to deviate from their normal drive path to come directly to you unless you give them a really good reason. This is essentially kind of tapping, tapping into that. And so I Do think that it's good to be, you know, to take notice of these trends, make sure that you're not overreacting. But another question to ask yourself is, can we create one of these? You know, there was somebody who had the idea for Dry January just like he had. Andy Frisella came up with the idea for 75 hard. You know, which is that, like, you know, fitness and, you know, really it's more than a fitness challenge. But I mean, these challenge type things exist and they exist a lot in fitness. Obviously you've been doing a monthly challenge at Epic for what, three and a half years now?

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, so I do think asking the question, right, what? How can we create our own version of Dry January, our own 75 hard, our own epic challenge? How can we do this? As a business that doesn't typically do this, can we rally other people? Because when you do this, the biggest thing that happens to the people who participate is they begin to establish new habits and they begin to establish a new identity. And when that happens, if you're the beneficiary of that, as a business owner, you are creating demand from scratch. And that is one of the hardest things in the world to do.

So look at it, learn from it.

Lean into it when it benefits you.

Lean away from it when it.

When it doesn't. But look to also ask the question, how can we create it on our own, have our own version of it for our stuff?

Love it. Love it. Well, hopefully that helps you guys. It just seemed like something. We thought that the fact that it is a pretty good trend and that it lasts a whole month, it makes sense to have a conversation about it. If you guys enjoyed this, please share it with a friend. And we appreciate you tuning in with us. We'll see you next time on the Business Lunch podcast. Hey, Roland Frazier here. If you're looking for a way to grow your business exponentially to get more customers and ultimately increase your wealth, there's no faster way to do it than to acquire other businesses that already have the customers, products, services, teams and media that you want. If you want to double your sales, just acquire a company that has the same sales as yours. It sounds simple, but far too many people end up starting new businesses that fail and forget that they could skip all the hard stuff and just acquire one that already exists. There's a reason why private equity firms, family offices, big companies like Apple, Google, and some of the smartest entrepreneurs on the planet do not start new businesses from scratch. They acquire already successful businesses and when they do it, they instantly increase their sales, their profits. If they want market share, they increase that. They can get new products and services to offer, all instantly. Hey look, 90% of new businesses fail. 90%. Why not acquire an already successful business and increase your chances of success by 900%? What most people don't realize is you can acquire highly profitable businesses with no money out of your own pocket in pretty much any country in the world, regardless of your credit, and without having to go find a bunch of investors or needing any experience. Look, I've been acquiring businesses for over 30 years now and I cover the whole process in my EPIC Investing Strategy training and I want to give it to you 100% free. Just visit businesslaunchpodcast.com epic to get your free access to my EPIC Investing training right right now, while it's available.

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