How to Find Clients During the Summer Slow Season Using Email Marketing - EP 258

Does Your Service Business Slow Down Every Summer?

You're not alone. Most service-based business owners experience a summer lull — fewer inquiries, slower conversions, and that uncomfortable feeling of watching your calendar empty out while hoping things will pick back up on their own.

But here's the truth: crossing your fingers is not a strategy.

In this episode of the Diamond Effect Podcast, Maggie Perotin breaks down exactly why your business doesn't have to slow down this summer, and the one tool most service business owners are completely underusing to attract clients, build relationships, and make consistent sales no matter the season.

That tool? Email marketing.

What You'll Learn in This Episode

• Why service businesses experience a summer lull — and what separates owners who thrive anyway from those who don't
• The "three types of business owners" quiz — which one are you this summer?
• Why do you already have a goldmine of potential clients sitting in your contacts right now
• How email marketing works even if you're not techy, not a writer, and have never sent a marketing email before
• Why email marketing delivers the highest ROI of any marketing strategy — and why it works especially well for service businesses
• How to use AI to write emails in your voice in minutes (even if English isn't your first language)
• Why your email list is an asset you OWN — and why that matters more than any social media following
• The mindset shifts that stop most business owners from ever starting (and how to overcome them fast)

Key Takeaways:

Only 9% of people are ready to buy at any given moment. The other 91% need time, consistency, and trust — and email is how you build all three without relying on an algorithm.

You don't need to be techy or a great writer. Your clients don't need elaborate designs or perfectly crafted copy. They need to feel like you understand them. That's it.

Your email list is yours forever. Social media platforms can disappear or ban your account overnight. Your email list is a business asset you own and control.

Email marketing works for every service business. If your industry isn't using it much — that's an advantage, not a reason to skip it.

Busy does not equal productive. If you're too busy to work on strategies that bring in new clients, you're too busy for your business to grow.

The Summer Lull Is Optional

The business owners who struggle every summer are the ones solving the wrong problem: taking courses, tweaking their website, waiting for the economy to shift. Meanwhile, the owners who thrive are the ones doing the work to get visible in front of the clients who are already out there looking for exactly what they offer.

Your potential clients aren't all on vacation. They're in your inbox, in your contact list, on your email list — waiting to hear from you.

Join Maggie and her clients for Stop the Lull: Build an Email Sequence in Five Days and Make Sales This Summer. A live 5-day online workshop — July 13–17, one hour per day at noon EST

REGISTER HERE - https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/stop-the-lull-build-an-email-sequence-in-5-days-and-make-sales-this-summer-tickets-1990959977889

In just five hours across the week, you will:

• Overcome every mindset block around email marketing
• Get clear on your offer, your messaging, and your ideal client
• Build a complete, ready-to-send email sequence tailored to your business
• Use AI-powered prompts to write every email fast — in your voice
• Schedule and send your sequence by Day 5

Investment: $93 CAD 

Registration link here - https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/stop-the-lull-build-an-email-sequence-in-5-days-and-make-sales-this-summer-tickets-1990959977889

Timestamps

• [00:00] Summer is here — and so is the lull
• [02:00] Why hoping for a better summer won't cut it
• [03:30] The three types of business owners quiz — which one are you?
• [06:30] The one strategy that changes everything
• [07:30] The goldmine you're sitting on right now
• [09:30] Objection #1: "It's too hard and I'm not techy"
• [12:30] Objection #2: "People get too many emails already"
• [14:30] Objection #3: "I'm not a writer"
• [17:30] How AI makes email marketing fast and easy
• [19:00] Objection #4: "Email doesn't work in my industry"
• 20:00] Objection #5: "I don't have time"
• [23:00] Why email marketing is your highest-leverage business activity
• [25:00] Introducing Stop the Lull: the 5-day experience
• [27:00] What happens each day of the event
• [31:00] Who this is for and what you'll walk away with
• [33:00] Why summer is actually the perfect time to do this

Connect With Maggie

Website:  stairwaytoleadership.com 

Email:  maggie@stairwaytoleadership.com 

Subscribe, leave a review, and share this episode with a service business owner who needs to hear it.

Transcript

[00:00:00] It's June. The summer is here. I love summer, and June is probably my most favorite month of the year, especially here in Toronto, where we have summer temperature and yet it's spring in a sense where the flowers are blooming, everything is on. And of course, if you have allergies, that might not be your favorite time.

But I just love how the nature is lush and green and colorful. And at the same time, as a business owner, you might be getting into that state, "Oh, in summer it usually slows down to me, so I'm just gonna hope and pray that this year is different."

And I'm gonna try to enjoy my time

While not doing much to change my situation. So [00:01:00] here is what I think, everybody. Even though in the summer maybe your service business experiences some lull, there is things you can do on the weeks you're working and you're not going away for vacation to circumvent that and still have a stable, good income for yourself, for your business, and for your employees if you're hiring one.

So strategy of crossing your fingers and hoping definitely will not make your summer lull lower and bring your income. But there is things you can do, and I wanna talk about it in this podcast

Because unless you're taking off all eight to 10 weeks of summer and you're good with your business operating that way, yeah, go ahead and enjoy your [00:02:00] summer. But the majority of service-based business owners that I work with can take couple of weeks off, and then they're still running their business. But running your business half-ass when you're not fully in, but not fully enjoying the summer, and you're worrying about when the next client will come from, how you're gonna pay the bill, it's not the great place to be.

I'm all about taking control of the things you can control to create the results you want. Because just like you are not off the entire summer, not all your clients are off the entire summer. And there are a lot of them out there who actually want what you offer, are looking for it, it's just you need to do the work to get in front of them and be visible.

And I bet that you already have a pool of those people at your [00:03:00] fingerprints, at your fingertips, and you're not tapping into them. You're leaving a lot of money on the table

So instead of worrying, spending time refreshing your email, looking at your calendar, let's do something about it. But first I wanna do a little quiz for you to do it right now. So in the summer, what type of business owners are you turning into? Are you group number one, who is just accepting that the summer is slow, blaming the summer for you not having as many clients as during the year, and at the same time crossing your fingers and hoping and wishing that this will be different, but leaving that as your main strategy?

And be honest. Group number two, are you maybe acknowledging that there's things you can do [00:04:00] to have a better summer, but at the same time, you're focusing on the things

that feel comfortable a little bit lying to yourself that you're solving the summer problem, but at the same time avoiding doing the things that would actually make your summer

Filled with clients. So I've heard recently in a networking event that I attended, somebody saying that they were taking courses and they were getting better at their crafts with the service that they provided while waiting for the economy and the time of the year to get busier, meaning they were solving for the wrong problem, right?

I'm not against you getting always better at your craft to s- to help your clients better and give them a better experience. But if you [00:05:00] don't have clients to serve, you getting better at your craft is not helping you. You need to get better attracting clients first so then you can serve them, and if anything, get better at that, right?

So are you in the group who's trying to bring in more clients but is solving the wrong problem, is doing things that are comfortable but not yet directly related to what you wanna achieve

Or are you in group three? You are the one, like myself and many of my clients, who understands that despite maybe the economy, despite maybe the time of the year that has something that influences how many people are out there looking for the solution, there's still things you can do. There's still strategies at your fingertips that will allow you to solve the right problem and focus on attracting new clients who are out there [00:06:00] looking for solution.

They just don't know you exist yet. Or clients who know you exist, but they're just too busy, too overwhelmed to even think about asking you for help, and all you need to do is extend your hand, put yourself in front of them and say, "Hey, do you need help? I'm here. This is what I can do for you." And make...

And allow them to say yes to you in an easy way

So in today's episode, I wanna focus on one specific strategy and then invite you to join me at a summer experience that will allow you to learn how to utilize that strategy, not only to make sales this summer while you're enjoying your time off, maybe in the hammock with your kids or whatever, but also An event that will give you a [00:07:00] blueprint how to utilize that strategy going forward over and over and over again for it to become one of the most reliable ways to bring new clients in the revenue.

Okay? And that's email marketing. I see too many service-based business owners sitting on the pot of gold of contact information and email of their previous clients that they served, and sometimes this is, we're talking hundreds over the years that they served. Or email list that they've built maybe couple of years ago or have inherited from somebody or bought of thousands of people, and not tapping into that audience.

Audience that very often already knows them to an extent, already trusts them to an extent, that's at their fingerprints

And I have seen [00:08:00] business owners doing either. Either they're kinda tapping into it by doing very inconsistent email marketing or not doing anything at all. If you've done some email marketing, sent some newsletters, and that never translated into sales, there were probably two reasons to it. One, the frequency or inconsistency of you utilizing that strategy, and two, not having strategy about how to

build relationships through emails with that audience, and then how to convert them. Very often I see business owners when they even send newsletters, they're kinda disjointed. Sometimes they talk about their offer or about promotions or

Or share [00:09:00] some tips, but it's so inconsistent and s- disjointed that the client never, that the potential client never feels like it's for them. They never feel like you understand what they're going through, what they're struggling with, that you have a solution. And then of course, if you have emails and if you have a list but you haven't tapped into it yet, then w- that cannot make you money.

Any money

And before I talk to the event, no, and before I tell you about the event and invite you to it, I want to respond to all the questions and objections that you might have about email marketing right now. First of all, you might be thinking, "Okay, Maggie, but it's gonna be so hard to start. I don't even know where to start.

I'm not techy. That's gonna be a lot of work." And my answer to is, it doesn't have to [00:10:00] be. That's what I see often with my clients who are trying to start email marketing before they come and coach with me, is that they overthinking.

They overthink it, and they make it too complicated from the start, which then makes them not do it at all. They think that they need to have these elaborate automations, elaborate- labeling of their audience and doing things that maybe, multimillion-dollar marketers do with their email list to even start.

And that's not true. Your client doesn't need anything elaborate. They just need to hear from you on a regular basis. They just need to understand that you get them, and you have something valuable for them that it can solve their problem. And that can be done [00:11:00] even in an email sent from your Gmail inbox or from your regular inbox, whatever you use, Outlook or whatever, right?

So you don't even need an email system to use email marketing, especially if you don't have many e- people to email, right? If you have under 100 people to email, you could even do it manually. And trust me, I'm saying that because I've done it myself. Now, if you have a little bit more than 100 people to email, email marketing platforms allow you to be in touch with your clients, build that relationship while saving time.

But there are very simple platforms where all you do is enter your client information, name, last name, email. That's it. And you can create the simplest template possible in less than an hour and start emailing people. [00:12:00] Okay?

That's how I started, and even right now, I'm keeping it very simple. My email list is not that big. I have about 1,500 people on it . And I keep it very simple.

Next, you might also be thinking that, "Oh my God, people are receive so many emails, they're not gonna read it. I don't wanna junk their inbox," and so on. And to that I wanna say, your ideal client do- does want to hear from you. Because your ideal client is somebody who has a challenge that they're struggling with, and they're looking for a solution.

And that solution is services that you provide. They want to achieve a goal, and your services can help them. So you being in their inbox, it's actually a service, a value that you're [00:13:00] giving them to making it easy for them to find that solution. You're meeting them where they are. I lead a busy life, and as a mom, business owner, a coach, partner, and I always appreciate any business who makes it easy for me to solve my problems, especially as a mom, parent of a teen, a preteen running around

Organizing their extracurricular activities, driving them everywhere between me and my husband, right? So if a business like that makes it easy for me to know where I need to show up, what I need to bring, where to put my child, when to pick my child, and it doesn't require of me hours of figuring out, I'm very grateful

So the main problem you have of not [00:14:00] utilizing email at first is actually your mindset about it. You thinking about people who are not your ideal client, and maybe if they get into your email, they might not be excited about it, but that's okay. They can always unsubscribe, right? And instead, thinking of a person who'll be grateful to receive your email.

And it doesn't matter, it doesn't mean that they will read every single one. But the one that they need to read, they will read, and they'll reach out and book your service

Then you're probably thinking, "Okay, Meggie, but I'm not techy and I don't know how to set it up, and when I receive emails from those big brands, they look so designed and so beautiful, and that intimidates me. I don't even know how to do that." And again, all I can tell you is that your first emails that you'll ever send can be very simple without elaborate [00:15:00] designs.

I know brands who've made millions of dollars with the simplest emails ever, and I make money and sign clients making thousands of dollars or tens of thousands over, months by sending very simple emails. So you don't need elaborate designs. What ma- what matters is the message in the email.

That's what creates connection with your ideal client. So now you might be thinking, "Okay, Meggie, but I'm not a copywriter. I've never written anything. I'm not good with words." And to that, I'm gonna tell you, me neither. Before I started my business, I've never written anything elaborate or nice. The only things I've written in English in my career were simple emails to my staff, to my boss, or if anything, corporate procedures.

And [00:16:00] English not being my mother tongue, I didn't study it to the extent like you study your mother tongue in school when you write stories, when you write some essays about stories. I've done all of it in Polish, not in English. So I can't ... I don't consider myself a great writer. But what I do know about myself is that I do know my client very well.

I know their struggles. I know what they're going through. I know what they need. I understand them;

root causes of their challenges, and I continuously learn about how do they describe that. And most of our clients don't describe their challenges, don't talk about their life or their business in that literature-like language. They're talking in simple, plainspoken language, and that's what copywriting and email is all about, [00:17:00] is about you communicating in your client language simply and clearly.

So you just need to know your client, and that every successful business owner or service provider needs to do. As a CEO, as the service provider, your job is to know your client inside out better than they know themselves as in regards to what do you help them with, whether it's home organization, whether it's their health and wellness, whether it's design and beauty, whether it's home services or their kids' wellbeing, or overall, whether it's sports or arts, whatever they do

And then another good thing is that in today's day and age, with AI's help, you can create an email with your own input, with your [00:18:00] voice, with your unique take in minutes. I've very quickly, when AI came out, I accepted the fact that, yeah, I'm not good with words. I will never be as good as the best copywriters out there who, studied in English as their mother tongue throughout the school, and they've read way more books than me in English and so on.

So I leaned into AI to help me put things in words, and with my understanding of the clients and how they communicate and

Me understanding how to prompt AI very well to give me what I need, I create emails very quickly now. Because I have a first draft in minutes, and then as I edit my drafts, I can make them better because now I have a mental space to make them be- better. I'm not [00:19:00] using all my energy trying to create an email from scratch.

I make them sound like me, and the content itself is still my idea. It's not AI giving me idea. It's my idea. And you can do that too. I can teach you how to do that. It's very simple, and it doesn't require a lot of time

Now you might be thinking that you're in a type of business where email marketing doesn't work, and I wanna say that's not true. Again, it's a limiting belief. I think email marketing works for every single business, and if you're in an industry where that's not used too much, then that puts you in an advantage because your clients are not getting a lot of emails from your competition then.

And if you're in their inbox, you'll be the first they will think about, especially if your email really directly talks to them

I have coached clients from different industries, [00:20:00] and those who leaned into email marketing benefit from it, every single one

Now you might be thinking, "Okay, Meggie, but I don't have time to do it, and that feels like a lot of work." First of all, if you join me for the experience that I'm creating in July, it's only five hours for the entire week, one hour a day, and I'll give you the details in a second, but it won't take you long.

And then second of all, email is that one of the strategies that will give you much higher results than anything else you might be trying. So if you've heard of Pareto principle, it's an idea that 80% of your results come usually just from 20% of your efforts

And I want you to think about that email marketing is one of those efforts that will create those results. So rather than spreading yourself too thin and staying busy this [00:21:00] summer, but not really effective, staying busy with things that don't bring you clients, you might as well focus on one thing, that lever that creates crazy results in comparison to the time you spend on it

This is a high leverage activity that takes relatively little time, but can generate sales for you around the clock, especially when you have a well-written email sequence that is scheduled and comes out and does the selling for you while maybe you're at a cottage or at the kids' soccer game, or sitting at a patio enjoying sunshine or doing something else in your business

The thing is, if you're too busy to create time to focus on strategies that bring you new clients, that grow your business, that are never urgent, you're too busy for your [00:22:00] business to grow, right? You'll stay stuck with the current level of your income, more or less, and you'll be that or slowly decline if you don't do anything to grow. Because there will be always things that

demand your attention more than creating an email. So as CEOs of our businesses, as leaders, this is one of the critical skills we need to develop, and that's balance the immediate needs of our business, short-term needs, things that need to be done now or this week and so on, like serving the clients that you have, like ordering the parts that you need, ordering inventory that you need for your business, with long-term needs for your business, which is consistent, sustainable growth, and that requires working on strategies that are never urgent.

And developing the skillsets of planning for it, allocating [00:23:00] time, and sticking with it is one of the key skillsets to scaling and building a sellable asset. So you will learn that by participating in my experience in the event, because you will have to allocate time, and I will teach you how to do it

Couple of more things about email marketing. Email marketing is still, according to research, the highest return on investment that you can do in any marketing activities. And that is because somebody who already knows you, whether it's your former client or somebody who subscribed to your list, they already trust you to an extent.

So in a way, they are a warmer audience, not cold person who's never heard of you. Second of all, email, it is more intimate, and if you have the right approach, you will create a better relationship with those people [00:24:00] than, let's say, with the followers on your social media or somebody you meet w- in networking once a month and you chat for three minutes, right?

You can create that intimacy and an experience that the person reading an email feels like you're really talking to them. So that's why the conversion rate is so much higher and you end up having a higher ROI and making way more money out of a dollar spent paying for the email marketing system

Okay, so let me now talk to you about the event, about the experience I'm creating and So that you know exactly what it is and you can join me there. Sign up, make time and join me. It's a five-day experience called Stop The Lull: Build an Email Sequence in Five Days and Make Sales This Summer. The goal of this event is really to help you make sales [00:25:00] this summer.

So make this summer not as slow as you usually would be. Stop The Lull and teach you that you have power to do that, not only this year, but also next year and the following year and the following year. It also will give you a blueprint and a skill set of creating a sales sequence that makes you sales for anything you want going forward.

You will be able to use that blueprint to create a campaign in the fall and in the winter and in spring and make more sales, attract more clients this way. So you're not only walking out with the sales sequence that will schedule and start sending by day five so you make money, but you will also develop a skillset to keep doing that over and over and again.

Because once you know that it makes sales, why [00:26:00] wouldn't you do it again, right? The timing of the event is July 13 to 17, Monday to Friday at noon Eastern Standard Time, just one hour each day. So it's five hours that week that will bring you thousands, if not tens of thousands of dollars over a certain period of time Maybe even the summer, depending on what you're selling and what your audience is like.

Now, it's a live online workshop type of event where I will help you build a complete ready-to-send email sequence. It will be tailored to your business, tailored to your ideal client. We'll decide on what you're selling in that particular sequence. It will be in your voice, and it will be power- powered by [00:27:00] AI.

There is a cost to it. It's not a free event, but it's very low. It's only 93 Canadian dollars. So if you're Canadian, that's totally affordable. If you're in another part of the world or if you are in the US, that's even less for you. And here is what we'll do each day. So day one, we'll focus on the foundation, figure out the tech or how you're going to do it, whether it will be in your inbox, whether maybe you have a system that you forgot you have, and we'll make sure it's working for you.

We'll deal with all your mindset blocks, and I will teach you about, the email itself and what we'll prepare everything we need to prepare to make this successful for you. Day two, we'll get clear on what you're selling in that particular campaign, the ideal client for that, and the messaging.

And I will show you that blueprint of what type of [00:28:00] structure and strategy we need. Then day three, we'll dive deeper into the structure and the anatomy of the sequence that sells, right? I will give you the exact framework, how many emails, which... what each one is about and what it does and why, in what order.

So we'll have the outline ready to go and work with AI to create emails for you. Day four, we'll build, edit, and schedule your sequence. That's when you create it. I will give you proven prompts to write every email, and that will be, again, tailored to your client, to your offer, to your brand, everything.

Then we'll edit it, edit the sequence in your voice, refine it for your audience, and we'll start scheduling it. So by the time you come to day five, we'll be able [00:29:00] just to troubleshoot, polish final details, and then hit send and celebrate what you've built and what's happening

Now, in between those sessions, we will have a community for this event on Facebook. So if you have questions, if you're working on something in between or you're tweaking something, I will be able to answer them in between the hour sessions. So you will have support when you will not feel abandoned and not know what to do

The sessions will be recorded and you will have access to them for life. So if you wanted to create another sequence, let's say in the fall or in the new year for a special, you will be able to go back to our event and go through it again with the new [00:30:00] offer that you have or the new campaign or the new angle that you might have at another time of the year

So as I said, you don't need to have to be tech-savvy. You don't need a fancy email platform or fancy email templates. We'll make it very simple. Even if you've never sent a single marketing email before, that's okay. You can start with this sequence. That will be a perfect training ground for you and perfect start for email marketing.

So we'll have five live sessions on Zoom, Monday to Friday, July 13th to 17th. We'll have a private Facebook group for daily reviews, support, and feedback, and also community. You will end up with a complete email sequence unique to your business, to your ideal client, to what you're selling. You'll have all my proven AI prompts to write it fast.

And during the [00:31:00] sessions, we'll have live coaching

Now, you do need to participate. There are no refunds, so if you sign up, you need to be committed to showing up at least three out of the five sessions. And if you can't make it, let's say for two, you'll just watch the recording. I'll make it available right after the session. Come back to the next one and you'll be all caught up.

I can't stress enough how powerful this can be for your business this summer and going forward. Because if you're one of those business owners who is underutilizing email marketing, you're really leaving thousands and thousands, if not tens of thousands dollars on the table, because I've seen it with my clients.

I've worked with clients where we launched their email marketing from scratch, or we fixed their email marketing that wasn't working, and they thought it was the email marketing that was the problem and not the messaging and [00:32:00] content of the emails inside. And once we fixed the content and the messaging, the emails started converting, and they started signing clients even from, cold leads that they were acquiring through ads.

So If there was a time for you to lean into email marketing and make it work for you, this is the event. Because I will make it so easy for you that even e- even if you've never sent an email before, if you've never used AI before, if you've never written an email before to your audience, I'll make it so easy you'll be blown away, and so simple, and you'll get results.

So this is the perfect event to lean into

And since the summer is usually slower for you, don't tell me you're busy. You definitely can find time [00:33:00] and create time to attend it. This will be the best time you'll probably spend that week on building your business, not only for the summer, but for long term

And having more clients to serve in the summer will make you more effective, because the less busy we are, the less productive and effective we get, right? We get then busy with things that we need to tweak or things that we think we need to learn, or time just flies through our fingers.

Whereas if we have clients to serve and we need to enjoy the summer, we can get very effective in serving the clients, finishing that, and going and enjoying hammock or patio in the sun. That's all I had for you today. I hope to see you during the Stop the Lull event. If you have any questions, send them to me, maggie@stairwaytoleadership.com.

I will share the [00:34:00] registration link to the event in the show notes. See you there. Talk to you next week. Bye-bye.