What’s going on guys? I’m Lee Godbold with Junk Removal Authority. I’m with Shane, he’s over there in the passenger seat. We’re heading off for lunch. It’s snowing here in North Carolina every December. You all up in the North. People we work with us in North are A Plus Junk Removal, Rob’s Junk Removal and Grunt’s Move Junk. We just had a consulting call with him this morning. All of these places are up north. It’s nice and sunny right now. Then in North Carolina down in the South, there are certain areas that is a part of our service that have 14 inches of snow. We’re experiencing about probably six inches of snow right where we are in Apex. So, it’s just kind of crazy. But what can you do? I mean we’re slow. This week is slow all the way around in North Carolina.
If it snows, people are rushing. The only thing that they’re rushing to do is to get in the grocery store and get their bread and milk. Then they’re going to be kind of locked in for a few days until the snow comes down. So, we’ve got like four jobs on schedule and that hardly happens unless there’s a snow event. It will build back up once the sun comes back out. What would you do when it’s slow? There’s one thing that I will tell you. After seven years of doing this, you don’t build a successful business on your busy days. You build it on your slow days. It’s what you’re going to do on your slow days. If you’re at home and you’re sitting around, watching a movie and you have no objective or whatever. You’re not going to build up a sizeable business once you get slow, because at the start there’s going to be more slow and busy days for most people.
Some of the stuff that you can do is to visit apartment complexes. You know, that’s something we would always do in our current and past customers. On our current customers and prospect customers we’d get out there and visit apartment complexes. On the current ones we bring them some breakfast. We Bring them some donuts or whatever you drop them off. In the new apartment complexes, we’d stop and we’d let them know what we do and what we can service them. We drop off some promotional material and we would keep on going back to those places because the first winter is generally going to be very slow. Take a look and see what your competition is doing. It’s very easy to make a mistake of paying too close attention to what your competition is doing. Some people have figured it out if a competitor has an online booking system and they only have one truck. They can get on there and they can see how busy the competitor is.
The competitor might be busy and at the same time you’re slow. There’s going to be times that your competitors are slow and you’re busy. So, don’t get too caught up on, trying to track and see what your competitors are doing. What you’ve been doing is working, don’t go too crazy on your changes. You can see if the competitor is doing something new and unique that you might want to try and adapt. That’s what you need to be looking for. Don’t get too obsessed over what the competition is doing. This is a great time to reflect and think on things that you could improve on your business. We took a lot of advantage on that when we got slow. Again, you don’t want to make crazy changes just because you’ve been slow. Then there are some advertising and you’re not doing what you can do. If you haven’t taken the time to review your books and figure out if there’s some unnecessary expenses that you’re spending money on. Spending money on stuff that isn’t providing you values and more customers, then it is probably time to cut that out. So, reviewing your books, that’s a very good thing to do. When you get slow. Take your team members out for lunch. Visit with them and do performance evaluations. Let them know how they’re doing, like what they can improve on. It’s a great thing to do when you’re slow. Getting team members, if you’ve already built up a team then you want to make sure they still get hours. Getting trucks really cleaned up and detailed. Maintaining trucks is a great thing to do. If you have a shop or warehouse area, getting cleaned up around, having things organized and stocking up on inventory is important. All of that are the stuff that you could be doing. Obviously just keep putting flyers out. Again, just have your team members put out door hanging flyers. It gets them hours and increases the chances that you will increase the amount of business that you get. Schedule social media posts, use something like HootSuite to get all your social media stuff scheduled. Participate in networking events like Rotary Club meetings or whatever. Get out there. You’ve been so busy beforehand. You haven’t been able to do these networking events, The Rotary Club. Get involved in your local Chamber of Commerce. Get out there, get involved and help them out on projects while you’re slow that you have time for it, because that’s gaining you exposure. That’s helping fairly-influential people in your area, The Rotary Club and Chamber members. There are other business people. There are people that wants to patronize your business.
Get involved with them. It’s going to increase the likelihood that when things pick up, when they come across a junk removal problem or junk removal project then they’re going to use you. Finally, if you have the objective of working on a relationship with a spouse, kids or whatever then go ahead and do it. This is a great time if you’ve been really busy that you might not have spent the amount of time with your wife or your husband or whoever that you have. This is a great opportunity to go ahead and schedule that in. Don’t sit around doing nothing unless that’s the objective. Unless you and your wife enjoy sitting around doing nothing. Just have an objective and keep working throughout those slow periods. That’s going to allow the slow periods to become less and less frequent. Your busy periods will become much more frequent. If there’s anything we can do to help then visit us at junkremovalauthority.com or junkra.com. Give us a call at 919-617-1975. We’re here to help. Everybody, have a wonderful day! We’ll be back before you know it. Thanks!