Saisonales Catering-Geschäft von der Auslastung her lösen

0:00Unternehmer/Gast All right. Uh, my name is Matthew. I sell premium catering experiences to private clients looking to celebrate milestone events in Sydney. Great. >> We do about 2.8 million this year with 40% net profit. I would like to be at 8 million in two years. >> Let's go. >> The main constraint se seasonally. So, we do about 65% of our annual revenue in six months. And if I don't solve this, I either say no to demand in summer or I am supply constrained in sorry or I am overstaffed in winter.

0:28>> Yeah. So, uh, one thing right off the bat I will say is that this is a feature, not a bug of the industry that you're in, right? Same thing as lawn care guys, same thing as guys who do snow plowing. It's just a it's a super common thing. Swimming pools sometimes, obviously, in the summer. So, like there there are industries that are just going to be more smoothies if you summer versus Italian ice store. Like there's a lot, right? Um, that are seasonal. Now,

0:51>> couple questions. So catering, what is your what is your hot season again? >> Busy season. >> Yeah. What is the busy season? >> Pretty much uh September through February. >> Okay. And so from now until September is when it's slow. >> Yes. >> So what why are people not celebrating from now until September?

1:19>> Actually, I'm not even sure. festive season, I think. Yeah, it's it's not it's not as much of a festive season. I think people don't spend as much money um going through winter. >> I don't know if any of that has to do with >> But you still have >> economy in general. >> East uh don't worry about the economy. They whatever. I just remove economy from from Lexington. There's nothing you can do about it. So, okay. So, people don't do Easter. You don't do corporate events.

1:45>> We do do corporate. Yes. So, we target corporate through winter more. So they have better lifetime value, but they have lower spend per per event which lowers gross profit. So okay, >> they do market more or less exclusively to to private. >> Okay. I'm just like it actually doesn't sound like you're actually in that seasonal of a business. People have like I mean I started with that but like catering happens year round. I mean shoot I cater every single week.

2:11>> Yeah. So we we we do large events. So typically kind of 60 to 100 people >> going to be like birthday parties, engagements, weddings there all year round. Um but a lot of the corporate rush that comes through in summer for end of year staff parties u things of that nature that's what it takes us like well beyond >> uh our capacity which gives us our busy season and then through winter we just we lose a lot of that.

2:36>> You subsist in the not in the off season. >> Correct. Do you like lose money or break even in the offseason? >> No. No. We're still profitable. We have a really good We have strong gross profit and strong margins. So, we're still good. >> I just like to make more money. >> Okay. Got it. Um Okay, so a couple things. So, currently, how are you getting customers?

3:01>> We have really strong organic SEO and we also do a lot of uh Google ads. >> Okay, >> that's the most that they're the main channels. So we have probably 50% organic, probably 40% organic, 40% ads, 20% referral. >> Okay. >> Talk on meta, but it's less tracked. Um, it's more of a brand awareness. >> Got it. So SEO and PPC kind of kind of rule rule the day. Um, okay. So what stops you from spending more on PPC? Are you maxed out? Like is it stop being profitable? Like what's what's stopping you there?

3:34>> Search volume and lead quarterly drops through winter. >> Okay. So our back to LGB still stronger at 12 to1. So we can just spend more. >> I'm trying to find my I guess my constraint or my my question. My main question becomes I have considered popping up a corporate delivery like a um prepackaged typical corporate catering setting

3:59>> through to be a kind of entity under cater by Matt which would be a year round service because they have a very inverted um seasonally to the event side >> where like the corporates are ordering more of that delivery but it's it's I don't want to get distracted like I'll watch a lot of your content I don't want to chase the woman in the red dress because it's a whole new business. Yeah. Well, I guess the pro like the problem that we're trying to solve here like you are profitable. You're running 40% even in the fact that there's on and off cycle. So to grow the business, we could ignore the fact that it's lumpy. I'll give you two examples of this. So, uh, Harry and David's, it's a chocolate company here in the US, does like 100% of their annual profit in the month of December.

4:42And then the other 11 months of the year, they have their mall location and they just lose money. That's number one. Other is if you look at like insurance, right? Um insurance makes money every year and then every eighth year there's a hurricane Katrina and they lose a bunch of money. And so I think what we what we need to replace is the difference between volatility and risk. So you can have something that is volatile but not risky. So insurance is volatile but not risky. Same as this chocolate thing. It's volatile in the fact that it changes a lot monthto month to month, but it's not risky because it's predictable. You know that every season this is going to happen. And so if we know it's going to happen, then we can predict it. If we can predict it, we can plan for it, right? So all that to say, if we change nothing about the business, but you simply did twice as much, what stops you from doing that?

5:33>> Nothing. >> Okay. Uh >> everything everything's quite efficient to be frank. We can we can just spend more, hire more. >> Well, then I think you have have that answer. I think what what feels annoying is you just wish that I you know if you're Harry and Davids you wish that the other 11 months of the year people celebrated chocolate as much, right? Um but you're just going to have a slow season and a hot season and that's fine especially especially since you're not losing money in the offseason. So I don't think you actually have a big problem to solve here. I think we just need to do more of what's working.

6:07I wish I could pull some magic uh uh business model out of a hat, but if you're profitable all the months of the year and then some months you just make more money, >> that just sounds like a business that has a predictable cycle, >> right? >> I mean, think about the alternative. It could be unpredictable. That would suck. >> Yeah. No, it's it's it's almost predictable to the to the percent to be honest. It's pretty pretty consistent. Um, I've I've been trying to contemplate like how to get around this without actually starting a new business. And I was just I've been thinking about it for a couple of years. I thought maybe maybe Alex would figure something out, but I maybe it is just that it's just a feature.

6:42Alex >> No, what I would like to do is just focus all of your time on not trying to solve that problem and solving the more important problem, which is like how do we double PPC and probably get meta ads going? >> Like if you did nothing else this year, doubled PC PPC and just cracked meta ads, you'd hit your goal. Yeah. >> So, it's like if you can double the business doing one thing, why do four

7:09>> touch, >> right? >> Yeah. >> That's it, man. I mean, the whole point of of theory of constraints is focus. And it's just being able to say all the things you say no to. Like, there's such limited resources in a small business. The biggest one being your time, your effort, and your mental bandwidth. If you can just say like, I'm not looking at this anymore because this is just a feature of my business and I'm so grateful because all my competitors will be distracted by the shiny object. Like let them worry about that while you just keep crushing it and them.

7:37>> Okay, >> cool. >> Yeah, cool. Thank you. >> Appreciate you, man. Congratulations. >> Thank you. >> All right. Thanks, brother. Talk soon. >> Byebye. >> Tutu Turio, as they say. Also, for those of you who were in the chat who asked how you get on the calls, um these are people, these lovely business owners are business owners who bought um a mega bundle of books uh during my best last book launch. Um and they're in a community on school right now, which uh has been closed to the public and opens up March 1st. And so if you uh and so I select people from that community. It's for million-dollar plus business owners.

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