195: Why You Shouldn’t Put Everything on Sale for Black Friday

Speaker 1 (00:01.31)
Welcome to the systems and workflow magic podcast where I help small business owners transform from feeling scattered to becoming streamlined in their creative businesses. I’m your host Dolly DeLong, a wife, mom, believer, family photographer in systems workflow and launching educator. Now this podcast is your go-to resource for mastering the backend puzzle pieces of running a successful business.

Whether you’re just starting out or are an intermediate business owner looking to refine and elevate your systems, workflows, and operations, you’ll find practical strategies and advanced insights here to take your business to the next level. Each episode is designed to feel like a strategic mastermind session, guiding you through smarter launch planning, more efficient systems, and greater clarity in your business operations. Together,

We’ll explore how to organize, streamline, and grow your business with intention so you can achieve sustainable success without the overwhelm. I’ll also take you behind the scenes to uncover what it’s really like to run a business as a solo entrepreneur, sharing honest insights and actionable strategies. Plus, I’ll bring on expert guests who will share their advanced tips and proven methods

to help you unlock new levels of clarity and efficiency in your business. So are you ready to simplify your backend, elevate your operations and launch with purpose and confidence? Let’s dive in and create some strategic workflow magic.

Speaker 1 (01:45.134)
Hey friends and welcome back to the Systems and Workflow Magic podcast. If you have been listening in this entire summer, you know that I am doing a Black Friday series about getting ready for Black Friday, how you as a small business center can be proactive and not reactive about Black Friday. And so this episode specifically is a quick and juicy episode featuring one of my

brilliant co-host of the Black Friday Summit, Mara Kuceric. just a little bit about Mara, she’s helped run over 100 Black Friday campaigns. And today she’s sharing a very juicy insight that might totally shift how you are approaching your Black Friday offer this year. And spoiler alert, she goes way deeper on this in her full talk inside the summit. So if you haven’t yet gotten your

free to get to the Black Friday 2025 virtual summit. Now is the time to do so. There are 19 different talks all about Black Friday and Black Friday strategies for 2025 specifically. So I hope you will join, but Mara, do you mind like jumping in and again, giving a quick introduction as to who you are just in case we have brand new listeners today.

Yeah, absolutely. It’s always fun to introduce myself, even though I’ve been on the podcast a few times. So hello, I’m Mara. Typically when I’m not talking about Black Friday, I work in online courses. So if you’re an entrepreneur or a small business owner and you realize you need some passive income and you want to set up an online course, I help you do that. And I’ve done that full time in my business for the last seven years. And the first year something happened that I was not expecting was I had set up all of these online courses for people.

And then they came back in November and they were like, hey, I think I could have a Black Friday sale for my online course. Or sometimes it was a digital product, like a workbook, a workshop, insert whatever the product is, right? And they would come back and they would say, I don’t know how to run a Black Friday sale. So pretty early on, was like, I can learn how to do it. And then since then, every year, I have a ton of clients who

Speaker 2 (03:58.494)
Either I work with all year and then I’m helping them specifically run their Black Friday sale as well. So we’re marketing their course all year and then we do something for Black Friday. Or I have Black Friday specific clients that come, we plan their sale, we figure out what we’re going to do. It’s super fun because Black Friday is never the same for everyone, which I actually really enjoy that there’s elements that you should have in your sale, but it’s not like you, everyone does the same exact thing. You can play around with it and experiment, which I think is fun.

Well, I am really excited that you’re here again just to talk about an aspect about Black Friday. again, like I did not realize, Mara, I don’t think I’ve ever told you this, but I don’t think I realized it didn’t hit me until recently. Like you’ve been a part of 100 Black Friday campaigns. Like that’s huge.

It didn’t hit me either until there was a couple of like mastermind talks I did for people. And I was like, okay, I should go back and calculate like how many clients I’ve had. And then I specifically went and looked at like Black Friday campaigns. And that’s just like, I was in the trenches on the campaign. So some of those are repeat customers. Some of them are like one-off clients that I did one time, or some of them were like, we planned everything out, but I’m not including like

coaching calls or anything like that, because it would probably be way higher if it was just people I talked to about Black Friday.

Yeah, so I am really excited like from your observation of running over 100 Black Friday campaigns. What is like in your mind or your like observation then? What is the biggest mistake then that business centers are making with Black Friday?

Speaker 2 (05:43.214)
Okay, so I’m going to share something that sounds so simple, but people are so tempted to do this, especially if it’s their first Black Friday sale. And if they don’t plan early, this is what happens. So most entrepreneurs have a handful of products, like maybe you have two, maybe you have 20, it totally depends, right? And they decide, I’ll just put everything 20 % off. I’ll throw a banner on my website. Everything’s 20 % off. Boom.

And that’ll be my Black Friday sale. And for most people that doesn’t work because what happens is people don’t know what to buy. They get overwhelmed. Now I will, there’s some caveats to this. think if you have like website templates or something that is, it’s really one product and then there’s different variations of that product, right? Like the end result of a website template is the same. So I have seen Black Friday sales successful for shops. Like another example would be you sell planners.

all the planners are 20 % off, people go pick the planner. But what I don’t want you to do is you have a course about photography, for example, and then you have a course about time management, and then you have a course about something else and they’re all 20 % off. Because what happens is people say, well, I don’t, I don’t know what to buy because now instead of just buying the one on sale, I have to figure out what all of these different products are about. And like most people do not have time during Black Friday to really dig into.

the ins and outs of a product. They’ve probably already decided they’re going to buy it at some point in the past. And so you’re just like re-incentivizing people who are already interested. So the biggest mistake is just throwing everything on sale. I always tell people pick one thing that’s going to be on sale. And then all of your emails will be about that one thing. Your social media will be about that one thing. It’s so much clearer to people the benefit of buying that product versus just constantly saying,

Everything’s 20 % off or 30 % off or 40 % off. And I see people send emails where they’re like, every email just says the shop is 40 % off, come by. And then they wonder why no one buys because they get overwhelmed.

Speaker 1 (07:51.816)
I want to give a huge shout out to our official Black Friday Summit 2025 sponsor, Cubicle to CEO. Hosted by the brilliant Ellen Yin, Cubicle to CEO is a globally charting top 10 business podcast for 1 million downloads. Now, Ellen is known for asking successful founders and CEOs the business questions you cannot Google. So if you’re tired of surface level content and want real,

financially transparent data back strategies. This is a podcast for you. Cubicle to CEO has supported over 14,000 entrepreneurs through their educational products and live events. And I’m so grateful they’re sponsoring this year’s Black Friday Summit of 2025. So go give Cubicle to CEO a follow, subscribe to the podcast and show them some love for helping make this free summit possible. And don’t forget,

You can save your virtual seat for the Black Friday Summit of 2025, happening August 26th through 28th. The link will be in the show notes. Now Mara, Becca, and I will see you there.

Speaker 1 (09:06.508)
Mara, can you share some pushback that you’ve had to you telling your clients, hey, just choose one thing. What are some excuses or pushback that has come up from that?

because I do get pushback about this and I actually talk about this in my Black Friday talk for the summit, which by the way has 10 things that my most profitable clients, so I’m talking about the clients that have made like six figures during their Black Friday sale, I went and I took a look at what do they consistently do and then that’s what my talk is about, of the 10 things that the highest earning creators are doing. And so I do get pushback about this. The first one is

Like what I already said, there are certain types of shops where they’re selling one product, but there’s different variations of it. like website templates, Lightroom templates for photographers. I could see that also potentially working. I do in my experience, the more limited it is, the more people buy. Cause like, even if you’re selling 20 different website templates, it’s really hard to tell people about 20 different website templates. And then I also see some pushback.

And I talked about this on my talk because there are people who sell more than one thing on Black Friday. But what they do is they do like doorbusters where one thing’s for sale one day and then the next day something else is for sale. And then the next day something else is for sale. I think some of the listeners probably will recognize this strategy. And that does also work, by the way. But notice how I said it was one thing per day. It was not everything’s on sale.

for the entire thing. that’s a variation of the one thing strategy and it can be successful because you’re laser focused on one thing one day. And then it’s like novel and exciting for people. So I always tell people, I’m not saying that strategy doesn’t work. Just what I don’t want you to do is to get lazy and say everything I’ve ever created is now 40 % off. Go buy it because people, people want, they want, they need to make less decisions and

Speaker 2 (11:12.192)
you not telling them like the specific things to buy is just going to add to their purchase overwhelm.

love it. So listeners, I want to encourage you again, if you haven’t yet joined the summit, if you haven’t secured your ticket yet, the tickets are free. It’s absolutely free to watch. And Mara goes really deep into she breaks down 10 things high earning creators do for Black Friday. And so I want to strongly encourage you to listen into this talk and

The reason why I wanted Mara to give, share some examples of pushbacks because I know if I know my listener, a lot of you are creative minded and you think, well, this wouldn’t apply to me because I am XYZ and I want you to know Mara has heard it all. Like Mara has heard all of the pushbacks. And so I want you to know, hey, like maybe you should listen in to these.

10 things and see like how you can apply it to your own small business. So Mara, I know we’re gonna do like a really quick episode today, but do you have anything else to add to this point?

just really encourage people to go sign up for the summit. There’s some really amazing talks. I think mine is pretty good. But there’s some that other speakers have submitted that I have been listening into behind the scenes just as I’ve had time and they’re really good. And my other big thing I want to say is to just try and have a Black Friday sale. is

Speaker 2 (12:49.23)
a very profitable thing for a lot of people. And I’m not saying you’re necessarily going to have a six figure Black Friday sale. My clients who have done that, they have consistently done a Black Friday sale every year and they build on it and they grow. So I don’t want people to feel discouraged. Like I don’t have an audience, but if you could make an extra $200, an extra $500, I think for most of us, that would be a huge deal in our business. Like I’m going to be on maternity leave this year during Black Friday. And if I made $200 while I was snuggling a newborn,

I would be super happy. So I just want to give people permission, even if you feel like you’re smaller, you have a smaller email list, you don’t have enough of a social, like the excuses go on and on. Just try it. And then next year you can rinse and repeat it and it can grow every year and become another source of income for you.

love that encouragement. Also I’m just letting all listeners know don’t slide into Mara’s DMs October and November and ask her for help for launching your Black Friday offer because she’s gonna be on maternity leave.

It’s true and I, so we are recording this in July and I am already booked out on Black Friday offer support. So just take that as encouragement that really the most profitable people are planning their sales early, which is why we’re doing the summit super early. And if you listen to this and it’s not August, it’s okay. You didn’t miss the boat. But our goal is that you guys are thinking about Black Friday before Thanksgiving day. Cause that’s what a lot of people do, honestly. They on Thanksgiving.

realize they should have a Black Friday sale and then throw something together at the last minute.

Speaker 1 (14:22.504)
Exactly. And the good thing is if you are listening to this after the fact, we will have resources available for you to to purchase. But if you’re listening to this before August 26th, then you can still get your free ticket to the Black Friday Summit. And I am just so excited about it, Mara. And just like Mara, I’ve been listening in to all the summit presentations coming in and they are amazing.

They’re amazing strategies and I’m gonna be utilizing some of these strategies for my own Black Friday summit. I mean, Black Friday sale, sorry. All right, so thank you so much again, Mara, for coming in. Do you mind sharing with everyone how they can find you and follow you?

Yeah, absolutely. know Dolly is amazing and she’ll put all of the links in the show notes to my website and my social where you can follow me and then my email list. share a ton of behind the scenes tips. share income reports, which people really love that has nothing to do with online courses, but people are always super interested in how much money your business is making. So I send those out every once in a while, but mara keserik.com is my website and just go click the link in the show notes because my last name is impossible to spell.

So I don’t expect you to ever remember that. I just always tell people, click it or spell it wrong for Google and I’ll still come up, which is wonderful.

Awesome. Well, thank you so much again and listeners. Everything will be in the show notes. And if you are excited about joining the summit, if you’ve already signed up, please let us know and let us know like whose talk you’re really excited about listening to and like what you’re planning on selling for Black Friday. We’d love to give you a shout out on Instagram. Anyways, I will talk to you all later. Have a streamlined and amazing week. You amazing muggle you and I will talk to you later. Bye.

Speaker 1 (16:15.064)
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