What We Are Seeing in the Economy

0:00Alright, so we are going to talk about, we're gonna go into a little more depth here on the economy, what we're seeing, because in the last episode, Neil, Neil, Neil, where you're going to tell us, us on the last episode, he said, do you think we're going to have a hard landing or a soft landing when it comes to like a recession and the downturn? And I said, I have no clue, just be a random guess. So I gave the 50-50 answer to copy him. In a bad economy, what most people don't realize is marketing is usually the first thing to get cut. In a good economy, marketing is typically one of the first things that gets added back.

0:41So we get hit the first and we get added back the first as well. So, you know, we see things before most industries on both ends. And Eric and I, funny enough, we're seeing pipelines increase. Would you agree with that? I'm seeing our pipeline grow at a much faster pace. And we're also seeing, how big is your pipeline on an average month? On an average month? Or where's your pipeline usually stay at? I'll just say, I'll just say it's probably gone up by like 60, 70%. Yeah. So when the economy was decent or good, our pipeline was usually averaging somewhere around like 15-ish million dollars. And when it started getting bad, our pipeline started to decrease around eight, nine million dollars.

1:28Oh, that's a lot. And that's not closed. That's just pipeline, right? You close a percentage of those. And it's revolving because you eventually move out the ones that you know won't close from your pipeline. You add in new ones, but it was maintaining around 15 million. I think our pipeline got as bad as to like 1.25 and now it's back at like, let's call it 3.54 ish. No, that's great. What we're finding is our pipeline's coming back up. It's not going back to exactly where it was before, but it's much better than the 8.9 ish area. We're seeing closer to the 12.13 ish, depending on the month, you know, like summer months for us are bad because a lot of the executives take off and do vacations.

2:05But yeah, you know, we're seeing the pipeline build quite nicely. And when we say pipeline, that's potential revenue. Like if we close all the contracts right now in the pipeline, let's call it, we get 12,$13 million in new annual reoccurring revenue. And then every month we keep adding more to our pipe, but also every month our pipe, we weed out the deals that we know we either lost or they're just not going to close because they're not ready to make a decision or they're just not interested in hiring a marketing agency, but we're starting to see some recovery. Yeah. So I guess mine would be over double, but also we're doing a couple of things on the marketing side that have been helpful.

2:44But I think the thing we were talking about pre-show too is - I want double. No, your numbers are bigger too. That's not fair. So what we were talking about before, we're seeing sales cycles still continue to be tough. I don't care if you're in SaaS or services, it's like, it's still tough. Like, oh, I'm going on vacation, da, da, da. People are dragging it out. So what's also funny for us is depending on the country and the region, the sales pipeline hasn't got hit as hard. So for example, the sales pipeline numbers that I gave you in which we were at 15 before, and it dropped down to call it around eight, nine, somewhere around there during the bad times, but it's gone up.

3:24That's United States and that's United States enterprise. And places like India, it's been booming. Our pipe is still in the seven figures. I don't know the exact number, but I know it's more than a million or$2 million. India is one of our fastest growing regions. Brazil is booming for us. Our pipe there is over a million dollars on a, you know, just continual basis. Australia has been booming for us. Canada, we think the market's gone hit hard. UK, we think the market's gone hit hard. But in some regions, our pipe has gone down more than half. In some countries, it stayed almost consistent. In some regions, we've actually even seen growth.

3:58But the United States is one of the regions that did get hit hard. Yeah. I mean, so that's what we're seeing, right? I mean, obviously there's other stuff that we read. I always look at the railroad data, right? It still looks, it's the worst in the last four years or so. So the railroad data basically just means how much kind of stuff that you're seeing move through these railroad tracks, right? But then look at American Express, I mean, Amex, Visa, and MasterCard's numbers. Yes. But it also could be people aren't paying them off as quickly, which I don't know, and they make a killing from that.

4:27Yeah. There's actually a really good blog that I read called Bowtied Bull. And it talks about kind of short-term, I think you'd see real estate get crushed. And then long-term, the services economy, which is like the stuff that the economy that you and I are in, that is actually the last to go. And so we'll tell you when we see that. Hopefully we don't see that, but we're at the end of it. So hopefully things start recovering. Time will tell. Yeah. 50-50. Anyway, that is it for today. Hope you enjoyed this one. Please don't forget to rate, if you subscribe five stars on your favorite platform and also hit us on youtube goodbye