The Game with Alex Hormozi
Seasonality Isn’t a Problem, It’s a Profit Opportunity | Ep. 952
12 Mar 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: Does catering have to be seasonal?
All right, let's rock. Revenue, business, and problem. My name is Matthew.
Chapter 2: Why are PPC and SEO essential for business growth?
I sell premium catering experiences to private clients looking to celebrate milestone events in Sydney. We do about 2.8 million this year with 40% net profit. We'd like to be at 8 million in two years.
Chapter 3: How can businesses embrace predictable cycles to scale?
Let's go. The main constraint sees Natalie. So we do about 65% of our annual revenue in six months.
Chapter 4: What is the Theory of Constraints and why is it important?
And if I don't solve this, I either say no to demand in summer or I am overstaffed in winter. Yeah. So 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.
Chapter 5: How do seasonal fluctuations impact revenue generation?
So like there, there are industries that are just going to be more for smoothies. If you've summer versus Italian ice store, like there's a lot, right? That are seasonal. Now, a couple of questions. So catering, what is your, what is your hot season again? Pretty much September through February. Okay, and so from now until September is when it's slow? Yes.
Chapter 6: What strategies can help increase customer acquisition?
So why are people not celebrating from now until September? Actually, I'm not even sure. It's not a festive season, I think. Yeah, it's not as much of a festive season. I think people don't spend as much money going through winter. I don't know if any of that has to do with economy in general. Don't worry about the economy.
Chapter 7: How can businesses effectively manage off-season profitability?
Whatever. Just remove economy from Lexington. There's nothing you can do about it. So people don't do Easter. You don't do corporate events. We do do corporate, yes. So we target corporate through winter more so.
Chapter 8: What are the best practices for scaling a seasonal business?
They have better lifetime value, but they have lower spend per event, which lowers gross profit. So we do market more or less exclusively to private events. 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. Yeah.
So we do large events. So typically you've got a 60 to a hundred people in the like birthday parties, engagements, weddings, they're all year round. Um, but a lot of the corporate rush that comes through in summer for end of year staff parties, things of that nature, that's what it takes us well beyond our capacity, which gives us our busy season.
And then through winter, we just, we lose a lot of that. You subsist in the off season, correct? You like lose money or break even in the off season? 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. Okay, so a couple of things. So currently, how are you getting customers?
We have really strong organic SEO and we also do a lot of Google ads. Okay. That's the most, that's their domain channels. So we have probably 50% organic, probably 40% organic, 40% ads, 20% referral. Okay. But it's less tracked. It's more of a brand awareness. Got it, so SEO and PPC kind of rule the day. Okay, so what stops you from spending more on PPC? Are you maxed out?
Is it stopping profitable? What's stopping you there? Search volume and lead quarterly drops through winter. Okay. Back to LTV, still strong, we're at a 12 to one, so we can just spend more. I'm trying to find, I guess my constraint or my question
My main question becomes, I have considered popping up a corporate delivery, like a pre-packaged typical corporate catering setting through Yacht Tap to be a kind of entity under Cater by Matt, which would be a year-round service because they have a very inverted seasonality to the event side, where the corporates are ordering more of that delivery. But I don't want to get distracted.
I'll watch all your content. I don't want to chase the woman in the red dress. It's a whole new business. Yeah. Well, I guess 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 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. And then the other 11 months of the year, they have their mall location and they just lose money. That's number one. Others, if you look at like insurance, right? 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 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.
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