Before we build anything this month, a quick baseline. Think back to last November and December. Roughly what share of your sales came through a marketplace, and what share came from something you own, like your email list or your own site? Reply with your best guess. Something like "90 marketplace, 10 email" is perfect. No one needs exact numbers. There is no wrong answer. A lopsided number is the reason we're here. We'll come back to it in January and see what changed.

Quick question for the group: when a holiday buyer finds you through a marketplace, what happens to that relationship after the sale ships? I've been thinking about this heading into October. A strong November doesn't mean much if every one of those buyers disappears back into the platform in December. The sellers who get compounding growth are the ones who move at least some of that traffic onto something they own, an email list, before the season peaks. Curious what people here are already doing, if anything, to capture holiday buyers past the one-time sale.

Most sellers treat September like a warm-up but it's the last month where your decisions actually change what November and December look like. Here's the trick: holiday buyers don't find you in November. They find you now, or they find you never. Search algorithms need weeks to learn what you sell and email lists need time to warm up before you ask for a sale. If you're still relying on marketplace search to bring you holiday traffic, September is your deadline to build something that doesn't disappear when the algorithm shifts. That means: An email list that's actually warm, not just collected and content that's already ranking before the holiday search volume hits. You need a clear answer to "why buy from me" that doesn't depend on being featured. October is for execution, November is for selling and September is for building the thing that makes both of those possible. What are you building this month that isn't dependent on a platform deciding to show you?

Quick one for you. If you've been told to fix a slow month by posting more, you're not wrong to feel like that advice isn't landing. Posting more is a visibility strategy. It doesn't touch the actual problem, which is how much of your business depends on a platform that can change the rules any time it wants. This week's post breaks down three questions that'll tell you more about your platform dependence than any engagement number will: If your top platform disappeared tomorrow, how would customers find you again? How many of your sales this year came from a source you don't own? Do you have a way to reach customers directly, without a platform in between? Sat with these myself while writing it. Not all the answers were comfortable. Full post is up now, linked here. Would love to hear where you land on the three questions if you give them an honest answer.