Intro



Let's talk about rhythm, shall we? In your life. Now my background is a musician, and so I naturally think of rhythm. When I was teaching people and still conducting choirs evenings and weekends, I'm always banging on about rhythm. And what does that mean? Well, it's really about having a shape to time, if you will.



And that is something that's very, very important for productivity in life and in business. So today, now that I'm surrounded by a beautiful garden here and talking about seasons and seasonality is very much on my mind. Let's discuss rhythm and how that affects your use of time as an organic way of using and managing your time. Stay tuned.



Seasonality in Nature and E-commerce



Hi, this is Michael Veazey, and today I'm coming to you from our lovely garden. I think it's lovely anyway in Hertfordshire. So about a year ago, in May 2023, I was sent up by my wife to go find ourselves somewhere more peaceful to live. We were in a flat in London, a bit noisy, very urban, not really relaxing. We wanted a house and a garden, and we've got them.



The garden, of course, is a thing that really makes you think about seasonality. And today, I want to talk about rhythms in your business. We can start with seasonality and the overall shape of each year as a very, very good start.



Now, it's not rocket science to say that quite a few businesses or ways of making a living have strong seasonality. So the two that I'm most familiar with, my old profession of teaching and making music (I still conduct choirs in the evenings and weekends and love doing so), and e-commerce both have very strong seasonality.



Some jobs, I guess, you just grind along same old same old week to week and then have your couple of weeks off in the summer, and that's it. That is not the case for education. In education, my wife's still working very, very hard in the summer because lots of institutions have exams. So A-level students are having exams. My wife's off playing the piano for music colleges in London where people are playing very difficult music for their end-of-year exams. E-commerce is no different.



Embracing Seasonal Rhythms



In e-commerce, if you sell something that's giftable, you will find that it becomes crazy in Q4. In other words, November and December, just before Christmas or the holiday season if you wish to call it that. And of course, that changes everything about your year. The rhythm of your year, your week, and your day is really to some extent dictated by others.



To the extent that you recognize that, you get in tune with your market and the way things operate in your industry, then you will find that things work better. If you try and fight it or just ignore it, that's one of the signs that things are wrong. One of the things that is really important is if you do have a strong Q4-centric business.



By the way, a lot of people who are at an early stage or even pre-revenue entrepreneurs (I don't tend to work with those anymore) are obsessed with the idea that they can even out the sales, cash flow, and inventory and have a non-seasonal type business. But the truth is that the businesses that I know that do really well embrace the seasonality and roll with it. They understand that that is the nature of the market they're in.



Planning for Seasonality



Rather than trying to go in three and four different markets that magically balance each other out in theory (one could have that but in practice I don't see that), I see people who successfully manage the seasonality. So, I think you have to roll with the rhythms of your industry, your marketplace, and the category you're selling on if you're on Amazon.



That's the first thing: accept seasonality and things get easier. Then you have to really accept all the implications of that. If you sell a lot in Q4, you will be working really hard in Q4. So you won't be available for much else. I've stopped trying to run mastermind meetings in December because ...