Making an Entire Year's Revenue on Black Friday WEEK

Join me as I chat with Jonathan Courtney, as we dive deep into Black Friday Campaign strategy. Jonathan shares his strategies and frameworks for leveraging Black Friday regardless of what type of business you run. Episode Timestamps 00:00 - Intro 01:01 - The Importance of Black Friday for Businesses 02:51 - Types of Black Friday Sales 09:40 - Comparing Strategies: MagicMind and AG1 13:40 - Premium brand approaches to Black Friday sales 18:25 - Bundling Products for Black Friday 24:40 - Startup Idea 1: Black Friday Agency 27:56 - Gamifying Promo Codes 30:00 - Our Black Friday Buys 31:41 - Live Streaming as a Sales Strategy Key Points: • Black Friday week can generate a company's entire yearly revenue in just one week • Different types of sales strategies include discounts, free bonuses, bundles, and subscription renewal offers • Premium brands like Apple participate in Black Friday without cheapening their brand by offering gift cards instead of discounts • Creating unique, branded experiences around sales can be more effective than simple discounts The #1 tool to find startup ideas/trends - https://www.ideabrowser.com LCA helps Fortune 500s and fast-growing startups build their future - from Warner Music to Fortnite to Dropbox. We turn 'what if' into reality with AI, apps, and next-gen products https://latecheckout.agency/ Boringmarketing - Vibe Marketing for Companies: boringmarketing.com The Vibe Marketer - Join the Community and Learn: thevibemarketer.com Startup Empire - get your free builders toolkit to build cashflowing business - https://startup-ideas-pod.link/startup-empire-toolkit Become a member - https://startup-ideas-pod.link/startup-empire FIND ME ON SOCIAL X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/gregisenberg Instagram: https://instagram.com/gregisenberg/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gisenberg/ FIND JONATHAN ON SOCIAL Unscheduled CEO Podcast: https://www.unscheduledceo.com X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/Jicecream LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-courtney-4510644b/

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Greg Isenberg?

  There's a little-known secret that a lot of SaaS companies, a lot of ecommerce companies, make the majority of their revenue in just one week. That's Black Friday week. But how do you actually implement a Black Friday campaign that's going to get you paid? Well, today, we go through all the techniques to do so. We share all of that with you. We share examples, and by the end of this episode, you will be a Black Friday expert. I actually recorded this episode a year ago, and I wanted to put it live again, because not that many people watched it a year ago. But I think it's one of the most impactful videos to understand how to sell to customers during Black Friday, and also just how to sell to them in general. So enjoy this episode.

• 0:45Greg Isenberg?

  It's with one of my friends, Jonathan Courtney, much-loved by the pod. So enjoy, like and comment for more.

• 1:01Greg Isenberg?

  Jay Ice Cream, what is this episode about?

• 1:06Speaker 01

  So it is, as of recording this, it is Black Friday week. It is one of the biggest weeks of the year in terms of sales for ecommerce companies, for product companies, for info product companies. We are running multiple Black Friday sales for companies this week. And I thought, what I've been surprised about is that a lot of companies who sell things, not just services, but like a lot of people who sell products, don't take part in Black Friday. And if they do, they don't really understand the different types of deals and different types of sales they can do. And so I thought it would be cool to look at some really cool examples of sales that are running right now as this week goes on,

• 1:49Speaker 01

  and look at the different ways you can run Black Friday sales, but also any type of sale. It's not just, "Oh, I'm going to do a discount." That's like really low-level, running a sale campaign thing. Just to give you a feeling, like, a company that's making, let's say, 500K a month, or 200K a month, could make $1 to $2 million in just this week. And a company that's making like $10 million per month, or $20 million per month, could make like- All of their yearly revenue combined in just this one week as well. And so it's not, and a lot of people don't understand that. You know, sometimes I talk to entrepreneurs and they're like, ah, I don't want to take part in that.

• 2:33Speaker 01

  I don't want to take part in like, it's too, you know, we're a prestigious brand and like, we want to stay away from that kind of stuff. And I'm like, let me show you all the prestigious brands that are more prestigious than you, running sales like this. And you just don't understand how to actually do it in a way that's maybe, you know, on brand. So I think a lot of people are not thinking about Black Friday as a sales opportunity. And people who do think of it as a sales opportunity, often completely flub it because they don't know the different types of sales that they can do. We run a Black Friday sale every year. We run Black Friday sales for our customers and they make millions of dollars.

• 3:12Speaker 01

  And I think we can show you, I'd like to show you like some of my favorite examples that are out there right now. And teach people a few things they can learn for their own things that they're selling. That's my idea for today, anyway.

• 3:26Greg Isenberg?

  So a few things. Number one, I like the way you say prestigious.

• 3:31Speaker 01

  Do you say presti- prestige, what do I say prestigious?

• 3:35Greg Isenberg?

  You say prestigious.

• 3:37Speaker 01

  Do I say prestigious or do I say prestigious?

• 3:39Greg Isenberg?

  No, you say prestigious. Let the record show that you say prestigious. That's number one. Number two, you said the word flub.

• 3:47Speaker 01

  Flub.

• 3:48Greg Isenberg?

  Which, which I thought was an incredible word.

• 3:50Speaker 01

  Flubby.

• 3:52Greg Isenberg?

  Write, write flub in the comments if you, if you agree with me.

• 3:55Speaker 01

  I have to.

• 3:55Greg Isenberg?

  And number three, I think, you know the saying, if you make it in New York, you can make it anywhere?

• 4:03Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 4:05Greg Isenberg?

  Well, I think if you can do a great Black Friday sale, you could sell anything on the internet. So I'm excited to dive in with you.

• 4:14Speaker 01

  I have an alternative way of saying that. If you can do a great Black Friday sale, you can literally fuck up everything for the rest of the year and still have a great year.

• 4:24Greg Isenberg?

  There we go.

• 4:26Speaker 01

  You could have your worst year ever, full of the worst strategic business decisions, and still nail Black Friday and still make it all back. Like, I'll tell you, we've had some, you know, 2023, we didn't have a great year. Like, I made some strategic decisions at AJ and Smart that I don't think were very clever. And Black Friday was, Black Friday and kind of like summer sale, those made up for some of the sillier decisions or larger expenses. So yeah, that would be my really messy alternative quote for that. So should we have a look at a couple of these Black Friday sales and kind of look at what they're doing? Like, I haven't broken it down into different types yet, but I think there's

• 5:08Speaker 01

  like, there's companies that do discounts, there's companies that do free bonuses and no discount, there's companies that do bundles with discounts and free bonuses, and there's companies who do sort of like, if you've got like a subscription software service, there's really interesting things people do to get you to renew as well. So I think there's a mixture of everything in here, from physical products to SaaS products to just like services and stuff like that. So I think I've got a big, I've got a big overview of some nice things. Well, I show you the first one because I can literally just open it on my phone right now. So, do you know the product Endel?

• 5:48Greg Isenberg?

  Uh, is it a sleeping type thing?

• 5:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, so they basically do, I'm sorry that this is not really focusing. So Endel basically does different types of noise and soundscapes which help with stress and sleeping, and they have like ADHD focus, whatever. And I personally think it's a really nice product. And my renewal is coming up, but I chose an annual non-automatic renewal last year. And so what's coming up on my screen this year, and I'll tell you what they did last year as well to get me in, they are showing me this 50% off if I renew. And when I tap into it, and obviously I got a notification about that.

• 6:34Speaker 01

  And if I tap into it, I'm essentially given a mini landing page within the Endal app, which is showing me all of the benefits that I might have forgotten about. And this sale, this like, this is kind of something that evolves throughout the Black Friday week, where they might add in a bonus towards the end of the week. Last week, last year, they added in a really nicely designed Endal bag. Whoever designed that Endal bag, I know you guys are based in Berlin, that bag convinced me. But yeah, so this is something where if you have a software product, or if you have a service where there's an annual renewal, doing something around Black Friday, even if that's not exactly the time where people are renewing.

• 7:19Speaker 01

  So for example, with the PlayStation or Sony this week are doing their Black Friday sale. They started it last Friday. And they have this PSN service, which is you pay for that service to play multiplayer on PlayStation. And even if you're already a subscriber to PSN, which I am, they'll say, hey, if you want to like extend for another year, if you want to add more on, you can do it at a discount during this week. And so that's something which is like a, you're already locked into the system, you're already part of the subscription. But now during Black Friday week, when people are expecting things to be happening and discounts to be happening, they're offering you a way to extend. Whoop is doing the same thing, you'll probably see these boys here,

• 8:03Speaker 01

  along with doing a lot of like little bonuses with their bands and everything. But yeah, SaaS products are doing like renewal pushes around this time of the year. And if you're not a member, they're obviously doing their subscription pushes at this time of the year. So that's one example that I really like. If you're running some sort of digital product, some sort of SaaS thing, this is the time of year where you can push people on some sort of nice juicy renewal plan. You should check out Endal, it's nice.

• 8:34Greg Isenberg?

  Sam Altman, the co-founder of OpenAI, just said that it is the era of the idea guy, and he is not wrong. I think that right now is an incredible time to be building a startup. And if you listen to this podcast, chances are you think so, too. Now, I think that you can look at trends to basically figure out what are the startup ideas you should be building. So that's exactly why I built idea browser.com. Every single day, you're going to get a free startup idea in your inbox, and it's all backed by high-quality data trends. How we do it, people always ask, we use AI agents to go and search, what are people looking for? And what are they screaming for in terms of products that you should be building?

• 9:18Greg Isenberg?

  And then we hand it on a silver platter for you to go check out. We do have a few paid plans that take it to the next level, give you more ideas, give you more AI agents and more, almost like a chat GPT for ideas with it. But you can start for free, idea browser.com. And if you're listening to this, I highly recommend it. Is there anything you would do differently if you were running marketing at Endel?

• 9:47Speaker 01

  So we, I think that they're doing a great job, first of all. I think they really put it front and center. I think I would probably take the approach that Magic Mind and AG1 are taking this week, which is I would include the free gifts upfront. So free gift, the free gift strategy, I think I spoke about it the last time I was on. But if we maybe open up, do you mind if I just share my screen and open up Magic Mind, just in case?

• 10:21Greg Isenberg?

  I don't mind at all. You know what that's the equivalent of is when you get like, I don't know, maybe you get some oysters or you get a fish and someone says, do you mind if I lemon it? You know, like, put some lemon on it? It's like, obviously, we don't mind if you put lemon on it. Like, no one is going to, no one is going to get mad at you for sharing your screen right now. No one's going to get mad at you for putting lemon on the oysters.

• 10:48Speaker 01

  I just don't want you to get mad at me, okay? So I think what Magic Mind has done, in my opinion, is like a masterclass in a Black Friday sale. We're emulating a lot of this for the Black Friday sales we're running. First of all, you obviously get your discount upfront. Second of all, you get welcome gifts and welcome gifts are things that you're only going to get as part of this sale. And so the welcome gifts are you get 90 days access to this open app. I don't know if you've ever used this open app. It's really nice. You know, it's usually $60. Now it's free. You get the Beyond Coffee book, which teaches you how to become more productive, but without, without coffee. And you also get free shipping as part of a welcome gift.

• 11:33Speaker 01

  I think they have the same gifts for both. So this is something where not only are they saying, okay, if you just come back to us and subscribe, we'll give you 50% off. Magic Mind plus free gifts. That's the thing that actually gets you. It like sweetens the deal. AG1 are doing the exact same thing. I don't know if you've seen how many gifts they're adding to their thing, but it's been building up for the entire Black Friday month. I'll show you. Let's see if they're presenting this publicly. Yeah, they're calling it their welcome pack. Oh, there, oh, there's some of, some of this stuff's only happening in email. So it depends how far, how long you've been in their funnel, I guess.

• 12:16Speaker 01

  But they're currently doing this. I'm just going to actually switch it to English because it's on German. Now we're going to have to do, we're going to have to do German. I'm sorry. I'm very sorry. Do you mind if we do this in German?

• 12:33Greg Isenberg?

  That's where I draw the line.

• 12:36Speaker 01

  So you can see that AG1 right now for Black Friday is doing two travel packs, vitamin D, the container and the shaker, all for the price of what you usually just get the, the bag and the initial shaker for. If you look at their Black Friday email campaign, they've also added in a hat. So sometimes what you can do, and that's what we also do. Is you start with a set of free gifts and as the campaign goes on, you add more free gifts, which obviously you give to the people who joined early, but it convinces people towards the end of the sale to jump in. And sometimes you can call these Mifkey's most incredible

• 13:16Speaker 01

  free gifts ever. Sometimes you can call these one like one time welcome gifts, but it's like a way to, and a lot of people do merch, like a one time merch, which you can only get during this period of time. I just think it's a really, people don't realize how powerful it is to just give someone something to sweeten the deal and discounts are often not enough. There's another way. Do you want to see like the more prestige way to do it? What is a prestigious prestigious? So this is, so what people will say to me is like, yeah, but like, like, you know, premium brands like Apple doesn't do that and blah, blah, blah. I'm like, all right, all right, motherfucker.

• 13:59Speaker 01

  Let's take a look at what Apple's doing. Yes, they do something very different, but they still really push Black Friday and Cyber Monday. So let me show you how Apple make this happen.

• 14:13Speaker 01

  Apple, and this is something that's also effective and more, you know, highbrow. This is you buy a product from Apple during this period of time, a non discounted product, and you get a $200 gift voucher that you can spend on something else from Apple. So it's not that you're getting a discount. It's not that you're getting a free gift. It's that they're giving you a $200 voucher during this period of time to buy something else from them. And I think that's like a really great way to not cheapen these high quality products and like these kind

• 14:53Speaker 01

  of, you know, high end products while still technically giving you a discount. They're just not saying it upfront. They're giving you a $200 gift card. So they're theoretically giving you a discount because you have to spend it with them, but they're not saying this is a discount. Can I show you another really, can I show you a cool and really creative one that an ecommerce shop has done?

• 15:17Greg Isenberg?

  Wait, can I show you, can I show you something?

• 15:23Greg Isenberg?

  We are the biggest nerds on the internet, I think.

• 15:26Speaker 01

  Dude, we've the entire AJ and Smart team for the last month, we've just been collecting these and obsessing about them. Show me yours.

• 15:36Greg Isenberg?

  I'll show you mine. If you show me yours.

• 15:41Speaker 01

  All right, well, I'll go for it. No, yeah, go on.

• 15:43Greg Isenberg?

  Okay, here we go.

• 15:46Greg Isenberg?

  So what I like about this is Black Friday sale, you have $17.63 in store credit. So instead of doing like buy something and you get a gift card. I think that if people have credit that is look, hello, hello, Max, you've got store credit, which is about to expire for good on Sunday. They put your account email and they say, use your code to apply the credit at checkout. Gains in bulk.com.

• 16:18Greg Isenberg?

  And then you it's just like it feels like, no, I don't want to lose my credit. That's my credit.

• 16:24Speaker 01

  Really cool. I'm just literally, I just screenshot that I screenshotted it and added to our team Black Friday thing. That's really cool. I love that one. So store credit. So they're basically telling you. You've got this.

• 16:39Greg Isenberg?

  Instead of a discount, instead of a discount, right? Everyone thinks of discounts. I'll give you 10% off, 20% off, 30% off. If the average, you know. Order size is a hundred dollars and you were going to give $20. Off, right? Instead of saying you have 20% off, because everyone is saying you have 20% off, the whole internet is saying you have 20% off. Say you have. Actually, don't say you have $20 in credit. Say you have $21.63. In credit.

• 17:12Speaker 01

  I love that. That's really cool. That's really nice.

• 17:17Speaker 01

  I just need to, I want to tell my team this for the next email. So just give me one sec. Can you bring that up on screen again? So because my screenshot didn't actually work.

• 17:26Speaker 01

  Who's this from?

• 17:31Greg Isenberg?

  It's from Jordan on my team sent it to me. So it's from Gaines in Bulk.

• 17:41Speaker 01

  I wonder what that's about.

• 17:46Greg Isenberg?

  Oh, no.

• 17:48Speaker 01

  This is going into...

• 17:49Greg Isenberg?

  Oh, no.

• 17:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's... That is so cool.

• 17:55Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 17:56Greg Isenberg?

  It's like a protein company, right? Yeah, like creatine, workout candy. Good name. Athletic digestive formula. Yeah.

• 18:06Speaker 01

  Okay, I'll show you one from my email screenshot hole. So this is another concept, which is...

• 18:16Speaker 01

  Let me see, can you see my Basecamp?

• 18:20Speaker 01

  Thing?

• 18:21Greg Isenberg?

  I see, I see Growth Day.

• 18:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, look at this.

• 18:24Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah.

• 18:24Speaker 01

  So this, instead of doing a discount, instead of doing Mifkey's, instead of doing anything else, it's, okay, all those things that weren't in one package before are now in one box at like a slightly better price than buying all of them individually. So and creating a branded element, a new branded product that's now going on sale during this period of time. I think this is a really cool... It's a really cool way of not just doing something discounty or not just doing something like, you know, free gift. It's like, I'm just taking all of this stuff. You see companies like Aesop doing this as well.

• 19:06Speaker 01

  The hand soap company or like the beauty company, I don't know. They've bundled like different scents into a box and they're like special things for Christmas, which make you want to buy them for friends. I really like that as a simple repackaging of all the things you already have as a bundle to sell for Black Friday. I like that one.

• 19:30Greg Isenberg?

  I like that too. I think, you know, you showed it with...

• 19:35Greg Isenberg?

  Who was it? Magic Mind. I thought what was really cool about their kind of bundle is they were giving a free digital product that I don't think, I don't think they started that company.

• 19:50Speaker 01

  I don't think so either.

• 19:52Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah. So I think that, yeah. So if you're looking for something to bundle, go reach out to companies that you like and they're happy because they're getting distribution, like a digital product is free to distribute. And you're happy because you're adding value.

• 20:10Speaker 01

  And I think like, it's such a missed opportunity when I see companies, like companies with million dollar Facebook meta budgets and they're just doing straight up discounts. Or, I mean, the worst case scenario is they're just ignoring Black Friday because they don't, like, if you talk to someone and they're running an ecommerce site or they're selling things online and you ask them in like, September, are you guys getting ready for November? And they're like, what do you mean November? I'm like, alright, goodbye. Either you're making too much money or just shit's not working at all. Because you need to know, like, from like June, we already knew the 29th of November was coming up. We're already thinking about it. And if you're spending like a million dollars already per month

• 20:56Speaker 01

  and you're just sending people to a straight up discount, I think that's crazy. Especially when this could be your biggest week of the year. Can I show you a really cool one, like a really creative one? I cannot tell you whether this works or not because I don't know anything about it. I just think this one's cool. So, zero data on this, but vibes, positive vibes. I need to reach out to the team and ask them why they decide to do this. Okay, I've always been a fan, by the way, it's also good for your brand, Sip More.

• 21:26Greg Isenberg?

  Sip More, baby.

• 21:27Speaker 01

  Hell, yeah. So, they're doing something kind of interesting. So you can either shop their curated kits, which are going to be bundles, or you can build your bundle. And I've been playing around with this. So- Here's like a whole like little web app for Black Friday. And the more you add to the bundle, the more you save. So there's this checkpoint at $99. After which point, so there's a checkpoint at $59 for free shipping. And there's a checkpoint at $99, which gets you 40% off. This is fucking genius, in my opinion. And this is something I'm going to steal for any e-commerce clients we work with in future. So I'm just going to like add things, they add up here.

• 22:11Speaker 01

  What's really cool is you can see the bundle building up. And now I have free shipping. I wish there was a check mark when you actually got that point, but whatever, we're all good. And we're going to turn this up. And now I have 40% off everything. And you can see your savings here. I think that's a little bit hard to see, but that's all good. And then you proceed to checkout and you can see all your savings. I think this is a super, super cool one. I love it. It's really nice. And I'm sure you can also add other discount codes. I'm sure there's other things you can also add on there. And I'm assuming that as this campaign goes on, there'll just be more and more stuff. But this is actually a pretty sophisticated Black Friday sale, creating your Black Friday box.

• 22:54Speaker 01

  I think it's like, it wins the SIP award for best or most creative Black Friday sale, in my opinion. And the SIP award, we know, is a very big deal.

• 23:07Greg Isenberg?

  It's huge. So I'm just wondering, did they build that themselves? Because that startup idea, go and just build this and make a Shopify app and...

• 23:21Speaker 01

  It's genius. I would assume, I would assume that the Four Sigmatic guys probably did build it themselves.

• 23:32Speaker 01

  But I don't know. I think they probably did. But I mean, anyone being out there, being able to build something like that for their clients for Black Friday, like, it's... Guys, if you're listening to this podcast and you know how to run sales and you have like some proof that you've run sales for yourself or for some other clients, or you could build that for clients, you need to be reaching out to them approximately August every year. Actually, a really cool thing happened. So we actually brought in a copywriter, an extra copywriter for this week, and he reached out to us cold, reached out to me cold in August with an email which was like, is your Black Friday sale planned already? Something like

• 24:15Speaker 01

  that. And he's here now, sitting in the office, helping us with our campaign, just because we have so many campaigns running and so many emails going. And I thought that was like a really clever way to reach out to us. Like, copywriters and people who can build things and build little, kind of neat little shop ideas for people during the Black Friday, they're needed everywhere.

• 24:40Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah, so that's like another startup idea, which is, so you can go and build the software and/or you can actually create the Black Friday agency.

• 24:49Speaker 01

  Yes. Oh, my God. Yes. Yes. And then you can, that's actually brilliant. No, it sounds like, I know there's going to be people in your audience who are going like, yeah, whatever. But actually, that's excellent. That's a really good idea. Like, well, yeah, that's really good. I love that. That would work. It's like, because all of the ads are going to be, it's your biggest week of the year. Don't squander it. Don't flub it, you know?

• 25:18Greg Isenberg?

  Don't flub it.

• 25:20Speaker 01

  Oh, man. That's really good. We need to...

• 25:23Greg Isenberg?

  We might have to do that one. We might have to find a team and invest in it.

• 25:27Speaker 01

  I mean, we help people run their Black Friday campaigns, but just from a strategic point of view, just like telling them what they should do, like, and helping them with the copy and stuff. And we've got all the teams literally sitting here. They've flown in for this week and we're just doing that. But an agency that...

• 25:47Speaker 01

  Proactively reaches out to companies, ecommerce stores and is like, by the way, like you're, I can double your sales during this week. I will not, you don't pay me. I'll just take a cut of the, just the revenue from this sale. Come on. We're so with, with what we're doing, just for transparency, we're only taking a cut of the money that's made. So it's, it's kind of like a, it's not a no brainer because we take a big cut, but it is kind of a no brainer because they, these companies weren't going to run these sales in the first place. So it's, it's like a, it's, it is a bit of a win-win. That dude, a Black Friday focused agency, which in general, campaigns, right? So what is Black Friday?

• 26:32Speaker 01

  Black Friday is a campaign and all of these campaigns. So we run, every year, we run a summer sale campaign. We run a Black Friday campaign. We've now started to piggyback on the Prime Day campaign, the Prime Day sale, and we're looking for other like times of the year to piggyback. For example, like back to school, things like this. Piggy, piggybacking on events that happen throughout the year and running campaigns during these events. A lot of like SaaS people, um, because as you know, a lot of SaaS people are like anti ads and ads suck and all marketing sucks. It all has to be organic. That's fine. But

• 27:15Speaker 01

  there is, there are massive opportunities. We just looked at a lot of companies now who are running these types of things, including Apple. Oh, the big, great Apple are running Black Friday sales. There is just a massive opportunity out there to grow your business by piggybacking on these things and running campaigns during these times where people are expecting to be receiving campaigns. Um, it feels like a no brainer to me if you can do it in a way that's aligned with your brand. And you know what I mean? You know what I mean?

• 27:48Greg Isenberg?

  I don't know if I asked for your life story over there.

• 27:51Speaker 01

  Shit, you got me with my own, you got me with my own poison.

• 27:56Greg Isenberg?

  Okay. So can I show you one last really cool Black Friday sale?

• 28:02Speaker 01

  Please.

• 28:03Greg Isenberg?

  So you got me thinking about it because.

• 28:07Greg Isenberg?

  Four Sigmatic, the one that you just showed is kind of like a game. And let me share my screen. So I got this email from Bodega. Bodega is a retail shop and they sell streetwear. So I opened it up. They send me like an email a week. I never opened it up, but I got got with this one because they say, there's a $200 Bodega gift code in this email.

• 28:33Greg Isenberg?

  Like, okay, you're giving me $200. Let's go. Got to open. So she's open. Then I say, oh yeah, this code right here is worth $200. Side note, I actually like, I love how their their copy is, right? It feels like they're writing me a personal email. Problem is, it's missing a few characters. Could be numbers or letters. Whoever can solve it and check out with it gets it. First come, first served. Have fun and good luck. And then they give you the discount code. So this is taking a promo code and turning it into a game, a treasure hunt type thing. Really cool.

• 29:12Speaker 01

  That's cool. I've never seen that before. I've not seen a company do this. And it's interesting because that getting a $200 gift voucher for a company that sells stuff that probably is under $200 is almost like we've just got free stuff for you.

• 29:28Greg Isenberg?

  Exactly.

• 29:29Speaker 01

  That's very cool. While you were showing me that, I was thinking of another one, but I can't remember what it was.

• 29:38Greg Isenberg?

  So wait, while I was showing it to you, you weren't listening. You were thinking about your own thing.

• 29:42Speaker 01

  You know, on this podcast, my only goal is to make sure that your audience is happy. And so I'm trying to think of stuff the whole time. And you know, because if they don't get, if they don't get what they want, they'll, they'll just attack. That's, that's it. Are you, the actual important question is, what are you buying this Black Friday week? Like, what, what things are you buying?

• 30:06Greg Isenberg?

  Um, that's a good question, like really boring stuff. Like I took stock of all the things that I buy repeatedly. So I buy like the same protein powder. I started taking creatine by this company called Thorn, by the same one. So I, I think it's like a good habit to look at the 20 things that you consume on an ongoing basis and just go and buy them at 20 to 50% off.

• 30:34Speaker 01

  Yes. That's a really good point. I mean, I do that on Amazon, or that's what I did this morning. I just woke up and you know, you go into like the settings and it just says the buy again section. And I like bought detergent. I bought like some random, really boring stuff. But yeah, I'll generally go to like the websites of my favorite clothing companies, or I'll, I'll go on the 8Sleep website, see if they've got anything interesting that I don't already have. Or yeah, that's a really good point, just to jump on the things you're using already and just see if you can get like more of it. Which is why, like, I think one thing I buy a lot of is video games. So for me, for me, the biggest part of this

• 31:15Speaker 01

  week is the Steam sale, which starts tomorrow, so Wednesday. And the Steam sale is another thing that's kind of cool, because they build an entire like theme and brand around their sale. Like they get artists to create the art for it. It's like really special. It looks really cool. I'm really excited to just even see how the Steam sale looks this year. They like make it into a proper event. Another thing you can do for Black Friday, and I heard this from a guy called Connor, who's here with us at the moment in the office. And he said, there was these in China for Singles Day, something that's common is to

• 31:55Speaker 01

  do like, almost like a QVC style thing, where you have like influencers on video, like for 12 hours during Black Friday, or during Singles Day, just selling stuff and talking about them. So QVC's telemarketing style. We've thought about doing that because it would be fun. We've done like a one hour version of it where we were like, you know, doing an ironic version of QVC. But I think there's definitely something to playing around with this almost like semi ironic, semi funny, QVC style telemarketing thing, where you're like, there's only 20 of these left. Okay, now there's 10 of them left. I think that, like, I recently saw Coldplay, don't judge me, I recently saw Coldplay on QVC. And I

• 32:40Speaker 01

  was fascinated by how

• 32:43Speaker 01

  Good it actually was. Like, they had so many little Mifkey's, so many little interesting one-off things, so many bundles you couldn't get anywhere else. I'm not the biggest guy. I love their first two albums, I have to admit it, I'm not gonna lie. But there were so many things there where I was like, I'm not gonna listen to any of this, but I kind of want this handwritten thing, or I kind of want this poster that no one's gonna be able to get after this session. I think it's kinda cool. Somehow, it like, it just like appeals to something in me.

• 33:12Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah, I wonder, I wonder, you know, thinking about the ad strategy for a livestream, like, could you create a livestream on X and then promote it? Like, I wish there was an ad unit that you can promote. I mean, of course, you can go and do like, static images and be like, there's a livestream, click it, opens up the livestream. But I wonder if there's an ad arbitrage here?

• 33:34Speaker 01

  We're running, I mean, we're gonna spend at least 100K on just our own ads this week. I hope you see our ads, they're really silly this year. They're very, very, very silly. I think what I would do is, I would have ads running three days before, I would have ads running on the Monday for an event that's gonna happen on the Thursday before Black Friday, just so you have some time. And the ads would be leading to like, a fun waiting page for people to register for the live event. And maybe if you register before the live event starts, you're given some sort of discount code to use. So you can use that discount code on top of whatever it is that you're gonna be seeing during this livestream. I think that would work really well, and I think that would like, get a lot, actually, I wanna do that.

• 34:20Speaker 01

  Now that I've said it, now I actually wanna do it. So yeah, you have a live event the day before Black Friday, and people, you're sending ads to a landing page, which is a waiting list, which unlocks a discount code that can be used during the session. That would work.

• 34:37Greg Isenberg?

  Beautiful. Keep us posted. That's how it goes.

• 34:40Speaker 01

  Black Friday agency, done.

• 34:42Greg Isenberg?

  Done. Alright. Jonathan Courtney, Jaded the Ice Cream, J Ice Cream.

• 34:49Greg Isenberg?

  The unscheduled CEO for

• 34:51Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 34:51Greg Isenberg?

  You know, the unscheduled J. Ice cream. Thank you for being here, sharing with the alpha. We appreciate you.

• 34:57Speaker 01

  Thank you so much. Um, I saw, maybe I'll, I saw in your comments, people like, uh, wondering like, why am I sharing all this information? Um, I just find it really enjoyable to be able to nerd out with someone and talk about all the stuff like, again, I do not have a Black Friday agency, although now we, we have to create one. Um, and I don't, um, I also don't really have anything, uh, like, it's really nice that people are reaching out, but I don't really have any, I can't, I'm not, we're not doing agency work, uh, for this kind of stuff. So I think just stay tuned to the podcast. That's the, that's the way to, to find out more cool stuff about this.

• 35:37Greg Isenberg?

  I appreciate you. All right, my man. I'll catch you later.

• 35:41Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 35:45Greg Isenberg?

  We are out.