Sound familiar? Ever felt your sales rhythm drop from celebration to silence overnight?

Welcome to the Resilient Retail Game Plan podcast, where I, Catherine Erdly, cut through the feast-or-famine fog so many independent retailers face.

In this episode, I crack open the real reasons your product business swings from record months to radio silence and arm you with retail-savvy strategies that’ve worked for multi-billion pound chains—plus the lean, scrappy shops braving the UK high street right now.

Why listen?

• Ditch the rollercoaster: Learn why you’re stuck in boom-bust and how to end it
• Build calm, repeatable sales systems—no chasing your own tail at payday or peak season
• Squeeze more margin by syncing launches with simple, effective marketing
• Create a retail sales plan that powers up even on slow, confidence-testing days
• Spot the “cycle of doom” before it derails your cash flow for retailers
• Walk away with independent retailer tips you can action before opening hours

Tell me what landed for you—DM @resilientretailclub on Instagram with your biggest takeaway or guest wish list. Tap follow (and rate and review me while you're there) in your favourite app to keep updated on new episodes.

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Have you ever had a record breaking month followed by total

silence? You're not alone. If your sales feel

like a rollercoaster with highs and then worrying

lows, then this episode will help you understand why it happens

and what you can do to finally break the cycle.

Welcome to the Resilient Retail Game Plan. I'm Catherine Edley and in the

next few minutes, you're about to get powerful real world retail strategies

from insights shared both from my guests and myself, backed up by

my 25 years in the retail industry. Keep listening to learn how

to grow a thriving, profitable product business. Let's jump in

with this latest episode. A few weeks ago I was having a chat with a

lovely founder. She just had her best month ever.

Absolutely flying. She had a new product launch, she had lots of interest

and lots of sales. But then two weeks later,

later she had crickets, nothing. Sales dried up

almost overnight. And even though she knew she hadn't done

anything wrong, and she certainly wasn't doing anything different than she had been when things

had been working well, then the self doubt really started to creep

in. She said to me, I thought I'd cracked it. I

thought I'd finally figured out what my customer wanted. I thought I'd finally started

to get that momentum going and now I feel like I've

lost my momentum and I don't know how to get it back. And then

that's the thing about fluctuating sales. It's not just about

cash flow. It can really knock your confidence and you start

questioning everything. Was it a fluke? Am I doing something wrong?

And probably the number one question that crosses people's minds when

sales are slow, which is will the sales ever pick back

up? Let's talk about why this

sort of thing happens. So why do people

have sales spikes followed by lulz?

The reality is, is that most retail is

extremely variable and you are seeing it more

because the likelihood is that your volumes aren't huge

yet. So the slightest variation in sales can

really feel like a very big variation. And

I've worked for many retailers for many years and I've worked with

many clients. And even in the big retailers, even in the

ones that were turning over a couple of billion dollars in sales

every year, there would be quiet days and there would be busy

days. For example, when I worked in the US I was managing a chain of

over 550 stores. Then one store would have a quiet day, but another

store would have a busy day. And between the two of them, it would even

out. So first of all, just to Say that a certain degree of

fluctuations are completely normal.

Sometimes we see a bit of a dip in the middle of the month or

getting towards payday. Payday does still have an impact.

Not as big as it used to be, but it does still happen. Basically,

there isn't a certain element to which you're going to see things

shifting day to day, week to week. And the lower

your sales overall, the more it's going to feel like a big

fluctuation. Because if two sales is really

big for you, then you can imagine that a day where you sell two versus

a day we sell zero is going to feel very, very different. Putting aside

for a moment the fact that a lot of the time in retail it just

does fluctuate and you don't always know why. Often what

we see is it starts with a spike. When I was talking to people, for

example, the founder, who'd had their best month ever, and then crickets,

what actually happened was they launched something new. They were

super excited about it. It was something that they found they really wanted

to get onto their social media, talk to their customers

about it. They just felt very energized and

really enthusiastic, and therefore they were

naturally showing up and connecting with their audience. And

often when people see these spikes, these peaks and troughs,

then the reality is either it was just a very busy time of year, for

example, it was Christmas, or maybe they were doing some

kind of stock clearance event or deal, so

that was getting people to buy. Or maybe they had a launch that they felt

really excited about and then naturally were overcoming what many,

many people have, which is a natural aversion to actively selling.

So they had something that meant that there was sales. But then things

got busy. They're fulfilling orders, they're juggling everything

else, and they didn't have a plan in place to keep the

momentum going. So once that kind of natural burst of

activity happened and was over, there

wasn't anything to help keep them going. So their

energy fizzled out because they were doing it all on

a very ad hoc basis. And once the energy

fizzles out and maybe the sales start to dip, then if that

confidence wobble comes in, then it can create this

vicious cycle, or the cycle of doom. I often refer

to it the cycle of doom, where confidence drops

so you're taking less action, so your sales go

down, so your confidence drops so you take less action, and so on and

so forth. The cycle then maybe will start again.

When you feel excited about something, something, or you have a launch,

or again, it's your Peak time of year, maybe Christmas for a

lot of people will be their peak time of year. Or back to school could

be another one. Or January if you're in the fitness business or

you have anything to do with weddings, because often wedding interest peaks

in January. It can then mean that

you're not only feeling less

confident, but in a way, because you've been through this cycle, it can leave

you feeling very confused as to why was it working and why is it not

working now. So the feast and famine, as I said, it can be something that

can be really, really exhausting for a lot of people and really

difficult.

So what are some signs that you might be stuck in the feast or famine

cycle? So the first sign I'd say is that

sales really follows your energy. So what I mean by that is, is that

if you are showing up when you've got something new or

exciting that you're really fired up to talk about and

people respond to it, but when you don't know what to say,

you disappear. That is a really big warning sign for

me when I'm talking to founders to say, okay, there's something going on here.

If you're allowing yourself to effectively

be governed by your energy level, as it were, when it comes to your

sales. So when it's exciting, when you've got something to talk

about, you're showing up and you are selling.

Or maybe again, it's your peak time of year and therefore sales

maybe feel a little bit easier, then you're showing up. But

when you don't know what to say, then all of a sudden your energy fizzles

out. The second sign that you're stuck in a feast or

famine cycle is that your marketing is reactive.

So you wake up, decide what to post on that day. It's not part

of a bigger picture. And probably if I asked

you what your overall marketing strategy was, then you would

be pushed to say you. Maybe it's like, okay, well, I know I need

to talk about this, but I don't really know how all of the pieces connect

together. And I am basically just deciding week on week,

what do I feel like talking about today. And then the third

sign, or the third kind of red flag, if you like, for being stuck in

feast or famine cycles, is that you're not taking advantage

of seasonal cycles. So what I mean

by that is, is that it's very important for you as a business

owner to not only understand your customer, not

only to think about what they want in general, to really have a good

understanding of what that customer wants. But you really need to be

thinking about what does your customer want right

now. And that's because

ultimately, at the end of the day, retail is a game of

probability. It's about you talking about the things that

your customer is most likely to want from you at this

particular point. So if it is October

and the nights are drawing in and it's getting colder, what is your

customer most likely going to want from you? Well, they're most likely

to want things that relate to the changing season.

So they may want things that will help them stay warm. They may want

things that will make their house feel cozy and warm. They

may well want things that are to do with

Christmas because they're super organized or they're on a very tight budget

and they want to spread their Christmas spending across the a few

months as opposed to doing it all in one go. They might be thinking

about Halloween. They might be thinking about

making their home feel more autumnal, seasonal

decorating. They may be thinking about updating their

wardrobe with something that is appropriate for the

winter season, getting their knitwear out and assessing if they've got

everything they need to get them through the winter. If you sell

equipment or outdoor sports, then

your customer is going to be thinking about what do they need as the weather

gets colder that they maybe don't have or maybe

had last year, but needs replacing? For me, one of the

red flags is when people just aren't factoring all of this into

their forward planning. Maybe they're waking up in October and

thinking, oh, maybe I should talk about my cold weather accessories, for

example. But they're not getting it planned out in

advance. Retail, as I've said before, it does

fluctuate a lot, but it also does repeat year on year. So it's really

important to get that plan into place. So let's flip this

and look at it from a different perspective. What does

actually create consistent sales? And

the thing is that it's about creating a

system. It's not about pushing harder or

constantly launching. It's about building a sales

system that can operate whether or not

you're in the middle of a launch or whether or not you've come out of

the launch. And it includes things like

it's about building a sales system that can

operate whether or not you're in the middle of a launch or

whether or not you've come out of the launch. And it

includes things like planning your sales calendar in advance,

tying together your product launches and your marketing messages so

that the two are working together, having a really clear Idea

about what conversation you want to have every single week with your

customer as you move through the year, knowing what your best

sellers are and helping you focus your marketing there,

Making sure that you can consistently talk to your customer across

all touch points. And one of the best ways to do that is via

email. So making sure that you're building and actually using your email list.

And this is really important, creating a

rhythm that doesn't rely on your energy or your

mood. So what do I mean by that? Well, at the

moment, an example I can give you, unrelated to retail,

but relevant here, I feel, is that I'm currently training for

the Valencia Marathon in December. I have got a plan. I

have a training plan. And what that means is

that I know in a particular week what I need

to run in order to work towards my larger goal.

Does that mean that I don't wake up some mornings, maybe many

mornings, and think, ah, I'd really rather not run today? No,

absolutely not. There are definitely days where I wake up, especially now it's

darker in the morning, and I think, oh, you know what I really could

do with giving this a miss. But I've got a plan.

So I am able to say, right, the most important

thing is I stick to the plan. I'm letting go of the outcome,

but I've got a plan and I just have to execute on the plan.

It's not about my motivation, it's not about the mood that I'm

in when I wake up. It's about me knowing that I've got a plan, I've

got a series of things I need to do and that that is working towards

this bigger goal and it's effectively removing the mental

friction so I don't wake up and think to myself, I wonder how far I

should run today. I wonder what would be the best thing for me to do.

Because that is often for many of us,

where the block comes in. Because as soon

as we're able to sort of say, oh, well, I don't really know what I'm

doing, not really sure, then we almost

immediately are able to talk ourselves out of doing something thing. Whereas

I know I'm gonna wake up and I have to run 13km

and this is the paces that I'm aiming for. Whether or not I hit them

is another question. But this is what I'm aiming for, then I know that

I just have to get up, get out and do it. And having a sales

plan can be like that as well. Because many people, as I mentioned

earlier, it's not something that is their natural wheelhouse. They

don't naturally wake up every day and think, I know what I want to do,

I want to sell my products. Most people, they love the creative side of their

business, they love selecting the products, they love talking to

their customers, they love the whole idea of

having the product business. Whether or not they love the

actual selling is another question. But if you've got a plan, if

you've got a plan mapped out for you of what you're going to talk about,

it removes that mental friction. It stops

you waking up and wondering what on earth you're supposed to do that day and

then wandering off and doing something, something else. Because we naturally

gravitate towards the tasks that we find the easiest in our

business. 100%. I see it time and time again.

Whatever you enjoy the most, you will naturally gravitate towards. If

you don't have a plan, if you're relying on energy or inspiration, the

chances are you'll only show up when you're really excited and then you'll go

quiet again when you either get busy or the launch has passed, or the peak

season's past. And then you don't really know what to do. Say so. Then the

momentum dies and the confidence takes a hit. But when you've got a

system that supports you, one that's really sustainable, simple,

repeatable, then everything starts to feel calmer. You show

up more, you start to build trust with your customers and then you can start

to look at the different ways of growing sales and the sales start to smooth

out. So if you want to know more about the different ways to grow your

sales in your product business, do go check out episode number 264

of the podcast, which is called Four Ways to Grow your sales, where I go

into more detail into the different ways that you can grow.

But just know that if you have a plan, then you're able to

really work on all four of those elements and then

that helps you grow your sales overall. As I said, build that

momentum and grow your trust with your customers.

So if you are sitting here thinking this sounds awfully

familiar, I'm pretty sure that I am scattergun

with my approach. Maybe you are noticing

that you're in the feast and famine, then I definitely recommend

checking out the retail sales game plan. It is my

brand new 16 week program designed just for product

business owners like you. And right now we have the wait list open.

So if you head to resilient retail club.com

waitlist, you'll get £50 off when the doors open

plus early access and some juicy bonuses as well.

So if you are listening and thinking, yes, I really need someone to

walk me through this process, putting together a plan, looking at

my business, looking at the different ways of growing my sales, how to make it

smoother and more consistent. Then you definitely want to head over

to resilient retail club.com waitlist and

get on the list for the retail sales sales game plan. We will be kicking

off in early November. We will get you sorted out

right away for your Christmas plans and then we will be together

until the end of February in

2026 and we'll have time to work together on putting

together that plan for the whole of 2026,

planning that out and giving you a really great start and a way to

make your sales more calm and consistent. Because that's what we want.

We want to get off the roller coaster and into the driver's seat. We

want to go from feast and famine to calm and repeatable

sales. Thank you so much for listening to the podcast. If this

today's episode has hit home, feel free to share it with a friend who

you think would benefit. Or why not tag me over on Instagram at Resilient

Retail Club. I love to see where people are listening in when they're listening to

the podcast. And as always, I'll see you next time week.