Pod Insights The $100 MBA Show MBA2694 5 Ways To Use The Holidays To Make More Money About this episode The holiday season isn’t just about celebration, it’s a prime opportunity to grow your business. But making the most of it takes more than discounts and last-minute sales. In this episode, Omar shares a fresh approach to holiday strategy that goes beyond price cuts. You’ll hear how smart, customer-focused moves can boost your revenue, build loyalty, and help your brand stand out when everyone else is shouting. Whether you're planning your first seasonal offer or refining what already works, this lesson gives you the tools to make it count. Curious how to turn the holidays into a growth moment for your business? Hit play at the top of the page and discover five ways to make this season your most profitable yet. Watch the episodes on YouTube: https://lm.fm/GgRPPHiSUBSCRIBEYouTube | Apple Podcast | Spotify | Podcast Feed Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Transcript 0:00 Speaker 00 Small business owners, listen up. You started your business, but you can't do it alone. And that means you have to hire people to help. That's where Justworks comes in. Justworks is the payroll, benefits, and global hiring platform to unburden your brain from all the complicated small business stuff. They handle the things you can't afford to get wrong, so you don't have to worry. So you can focus on the parts of running a business that you enjoy, knowing everything else is running smoothly. You don't have to worry when it just works. Ever invest in something that seemed incredible at first, but didn't live up to the hype? For example, I really wanted to love the show Mad Men. I really tried to watch it and love it, but it just didn't do anything for me. As a marketer and business person, the show was a little bit of a disappointment.
0:45 Speaker 00 Marketers know that feeling. They optimize for the numbers that look great like impressions, but then we don't see revenue. LinkedIn has a word for that: bull spend. Instead, you can get the highest ROAS of major ad networks with LinkedIn ads. Cut the bull spend, advertise on LinkedIn. Spend $250 and get a $250 credit. Go to LinkedIn.com/MBAShow. Terms apply. So, the holidays are about to be upon us, and it's one of the best times of the year to make more money in your business. But not because of the gimmicks or the giant discounts that people offer. This is when people are already in the buying mode, and you want to capitalize on that.
1:27 Speaker 00 People want to spend, people want to give, and they're looking for reasons to say yes. Today, I'm going to show you five smart holiday strategies that can boost your revenue, deepen loyalty with your customers, and even make your business look better in the process. It's going to improve your brand, improve how people perceive you. I'm going to show you step by step how to deploy each of these five.
1:54 Speaker 00 Welcome back to the $100 MBA Show. I'm your host, Omar Zenhome, where I deliver practical business lessons three times a week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, to help you start, grow, and scale your business.
2:07 Speaker 00 Real quick, if these episodes help you in any way, hit the follow button on this podcast app. It helps us to keep bringing you practical business insights three times a week for free. Thanks. First, I want to address the fact that I'm talking about this right now, so you can start working on this, start implementing the things I'm talking to you about today. Because during November and December, statistically, purchase intent skyrockets. People expect to get offers from you. They want a deal. They want a reason to buy, really. And the goal isn't to slash prices until you bleed out all your margins. What you want to do is you want to create timely reasons to act now. And what I found in my experience is that the best offers that tie into the season,
2:51 Speaker 00 tie into them emotionally, with generosity, with giving, with gratitude, or a fresh start for the new year. You want to tie into those emotions so that you give them a compelling reason to buy now. Let me start with strategy number one to increase your revenue this holiday season. And that's buy one, give one. Now, a lot of people know buy one, get one, where like you buy one item from a store and they give you one for free. So this is like a two-for-one special. But this is a feel-good strategy. This kind of turns it on its head. A good example of this is MasterClass. They do this brilliantly with their buy a membership, get a second one for a friend. And they run this promotion during the holidays.
3:33 Speaker 00 Why? Because they are tapping into the holiday generosity. They know you need to get a gift for somebody in your family that maybe you're not sure what to get them. And MasterClass is probably perfect for most people that want to grow, that want to learn, because there's videos and courses on pretty much every topic. So what MasterClass is doing is allowing their customers to be the hero. They're buying for themselves, but they also get a membership for a friend that they can gift. So how can you use it? You can sell your course or your membership the same exact way and offer a gift a friend code. So basically, you don't have to make this super complicated. You could just ask the customer to email you once they buy and you will give them a code, a coupon code for their friend. That code will give them 100% off.
4:18 Speaker 00 Make sure that this coupon code is limited to one and is also unique. So that way you can give out unique codes to every purchase. Now, you also want to run it in a limited window. So like if you buy today, you'll also be able to get a gift code for your friend in the next seven days. You've got to buy within seven days. But you can also run the limited window for the actual voucher itself, so that your friend has to cash it in at some point. So you want to give a little bit of leeway here because you want them to be able to give it during the holidays. So maybe you can say they need to cash in within six months. So you want to make it easy for them to gift this code. So you can give them a template of messages they can send to their friend. Or you can just go above and beyond and say, hey, we will send it to your friend if you'd like with a special message.
5:01 Speaker 00 You know, you can provide any kind of extra message you want to, similar to what Amazon does when you gift a item that you're buying. So you could just send the email directly to the person that's getting the gift and say, hey, your friend so and so bought you this gift for their holidays. Here you go. The key here is to make this gift feel valuable and not cheap. And this is what I love about it is that, yes, you are buying a membership for a year, but then you're getting a free year of membership for a friend. So it feels like two birds and one stone. You're buying something for yourself, but you're also buying something for somebody else with the same amount of money. Kind of fun, buy one, get one free. But also in the context of learning and courses and programs and memberships, I think this is even more powerful because by getting a friend to do the courses with you,
5:45 Speaker 00 you kind of have a study buddy and you have an accountability buddy. And you're more likely to do the work and do the courses and implement and get results. My second strategy for the holidays is a little bit of a different spin of the previous one. And this is get one, get a hundred dollar gift card. This is a perfect offer if your buyers are very practical. And the offer is basically buy today and I'm going to give you a hundred dollar Amazon gift card for your. Holidays shopping, so your holiday shopping is sorted. So why does it work? Well, it reframes the purchase. Instead of discounting your product, you're allowing them to save time and you're basically giving them money so they can buy gifts on Amazon. Now, I like the Amazon example, or any online store really.
6:29 Speaker 00 And that way you can ship the gifts to whoever you want with that gift certificate. It literally feels like you're giving them money. Now, this works for products that have a little bit of a higher price point, that have high margins, and you can afford to spend the $100 gift certificate on Amazon. A good example of this is like a SaaS company, a software that you buy an annual plan for, and then you get the gift card. So higher price kind of deals, it makes sense. Another one could be a coaching program. Maybe you have a coaching program for $5,000 or $10,000. Your margins are pretty high. And you could say, hey, enroll in the course, enroll in the program, and you'll get a $100 gift card that you can use on books or gear that you need to implement some of the stuff that we're going to be talking about in the program.
7:13 Speaker 00 The only little stipulation I would give when it comes to this strategy is you want to have a grace period before you give them the gift card. And you want to allot some time for refunds or chargebacks. So maybe it's seven days, maybe it's 14 days. You make that judgment. But the point here is that you don't want to give everything at once, and then they want a refund, and then they already use the gift card. It's a little bit messy, and you're kind of out of pocket. So usually in this strategy, people wait seven or 14 days until the refund policy is over, with maybe some leeway as well. And there's no kind of buyers are more surcharge back. The holidays are the season business owners get pulled in six directions. More calls, more requests, more chances for things to slip through the cracks. Hoping you catch it all isn't a plan.
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9:59 Speaker 00 Strategy number three, in my opinion, is my favorite. It's brilliant. I've seen it implemented a few times with some of my friends and it's just smart. Here it is. The price goes up next year. What is this? This is all about urgency and it's all about transparency. You're going to announce to your customers that right now is the best time to buy. Why? Because prices increase on January 1st. This is your last chance to get lifetime access or my rates at this rate in 2025. So basically, if you want my product or service at the best price possible, Now it's time to buy because the price will go up on January 1st. Like I mentioned, a friend of mine runs the same promo every year. His customers expect it and they buy before the price goes up.
10:43 Speaker 00 So they know for sure the price is going up because it happened last year. And they capitalize on the opportunities. This offer actually gets better over time. This place to the fear of paying more later and not the fear of missing out on some Black Friday deal. It rewards people who take action early without devaluing your product and like slashing prices. You're still making as much money as you would have made yesterday. But you're showing people that you are improving your product. You're improving your service and therefore the prices are going up. And now is the time to buy. Here's a pro tip. Announce the price increase publicly. Okay, so say for example, it's during the holidays and you send the email out to your list and you say, hey, my prices are going up January 1st, so now's the time to buy.
11:27 Speaker 00 January 1st rolls around, email the same people who haven't bought though, obviously. And say, hey, my price did go up and say, here's the new price. Wish you guys all great year ahead, happy to serve you. That builds trust for the next year, saying that you kept your word. Just like if something sells out, you tell people it actually sells out and they can't buy. Strategy number four, buy today, pay most in 2026. This is a payment flexibility play. People are a lot of times strapped on cash, low on funds, especially towards the end of the year. Where they spent a lot of money on gifts already. You want to offer a generous payment plan. Maybe they can pay a small deposit now in 2025.
12:10 Speaker 00 And they can pay the bulk in 2026 over a course of a few months. So why does this work? Well, like I mentioned, December is a high expense month. Gifts, travels, holidays, people just buying groceries to make Thanksgiving dinner and making Christmas dinner and all that kind of stuff. You also remove the financial friction so people can say yes now. So you say, hey, we know things are tight. So why don't you go ahead and buy it now by just having a small deposit or one payment and we'll break. Break up the rest of the amount over the next four or five months in the new year. So for example, if you have a program that's $997, you could say, hey, pay $97 now and the rest over 12 months, starting in February.
12:55 Speaker 00 So even you give them a whole month of grace period in January. We've done this a lot in my software company, Webinar Ninja. You sign up today, first payment in 30 days. But make sure you communicate, you lock in today's price, even though payments start later. That's a win-win. So you get a good deal and you don't have to pay most of the money until later. Strategy number five, the anti-Black Friday. We've done this so many times at Webinar Ninja, year after year. It's one that's close to my heart. And what it is all about is that instead of doing Black Friday, we do Green Friday. It's a campaign that we decided to do for new customers who want to buy our product, but need a compelling reason why to buy now. So what is Green Friday?
13:39 Speaker 00 Well, for every new customer during that period of time, we planted 10 trees on their behalf. We didn't discount the product. We gave back. We gave them something that maybe they would be interested in. So people that are really into goodwill, into the environment, love the idea of nature. This kind of stood out from the crowd of noise and, you know, Black Friday deals and slashing prices. People like, hey, I like your platform. I don't need a discount. Or maybe I'd rather have this instead. Listen, you may not be this way, but there's a lot of people out there that think differently. So you might want to do something similar, like donate a portion of the sales to charity or sponsor or local families or schools.
14:20 Speaker 00 Or a portion of the proceeds go to feeding families that don't have, you know, Thanksgiving dinner or Christmas dinners. You could do what we did, plant trees, fund clean water or support entrepreneurship programs, all kinds of stuff. Once everyone else is screaming, you know, sale and buy now, you can stand up by just saying, hey, we're giving back. We're giving back this holiday season and you're helping us out. Customers remember that and it goes a long way after the holidays and it's a good boost for your brand and shows that, hey, you're not just trying to make money, you're also trying to make a difference. So I want to give you some advice when it comes to which strategy to use for which scenarios. So if you have a low-priced product, the buy one, gift one idea is a really good one because
15:02 Speaker 00 it really shows a lot of value. They're getting double the value, basically, every time they buy your product. So when they buy your product, they can gift that product to a friend as well. If you have a high-ticket offer, an expensive product, try payment plans or price increases next year. So they feel like, hey, this is the best offer possible. And if you're a mission-driven brand, go green on Friday, right? Go green on that Black Friday or that Cyber Monday. Whichever you pick, make the deadline clear, keep your messaging simple, and you really want to just make sure you're delivering real value. If you're a customer of your own product, would you find this to be compelling? Would you find this to be a good deal? Ask yourself that question, and it'll be pretty clear on what to do.
15:46 Speaker 00 So to recap real quick, here are five ways to use your holidays to make more money. The buy one, give one offer, the gift card bonus, prices go up next year, buy now, pay later, and then finally, number five, Green Friday, giving back. Whichever choice you choose, whatever route you choose, do it with intention. Make your customer feel good about buying from you, opposed to your competitor. They're going to come back year after year if they feel like they're getting value, but also feel like you're doing this for the right reasons. And what I like to do is, in my emails, in my marketing, is just be transparent and honest why we're doing this. Hey, we are giving away a free membership for every membership that is purchased, so that you can gift it to a
16:29 Speaker 00 friend to make your holiday shopping easy, but also, we want to spread the word about our program, and we want to make sure that you can invite like-minded people to the program by gifting them this for the holiday. Just be honest, and people will kind of resonate with that and be like, cool, I get that. That makes sense. Let me find out how I can buy this product. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. The holidays are a time for you to get creative and it doesn't have to be this mad rush. It doesn't have to be crazy. And maybe the holidays are not like a make or break thing for you. You know, I used to work at Toys R Us corporate, big toy store in the U.S. And I used to do tech support when I was in university there and do a lot of like IT work there and help with their security and their computers and all that kind of stuff.
17:09 Speaker 00 And it was insane November, December, and even into January because some people celebrated the Orthodox Christmas that's into January. And you know, it's toys, obviously. So this is the season and you know, Toys R Us made, I believe, 25 to 30% of all their annual revenue in the holiday season. So a crazy amount of revenue was made in that time. And if it was kind of make or break for them. Your business may not be that way. You know, it may just be, you know, let's try to maintain the sales numbers we do every month, you know? So don't feel like you have to have like this huge boost of sales in the season just because it's a holiday season.
17:50 Speaker 00 Use some of the strategies I shared with you today, but understand you want to make sure that this is not just, you know, a time where you make all this money and you don't make money throughout the year, right? Know your business, know your market, know your product. And with Toys R Us, for example, they know that they're going to make the bulk of their money in the holiday season because that's when people buy toys and gifts for kids.
18:11 Speaker 00 If you found today's episode helpful and you want more practical business lessons to help you start, grow and scale your business, the best thing you could do is subscribe to this podcast. Hit subscribe or follow on your favorite podcast app, the one that you're using right now, whether it's Apple or Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts. By hitting subscribe, you get our next episode automatically and it's the best way to support the show. It's absolutely free and it's a way for you to commit to growing your business. And now that you've subscribed, I'll check you in the next episode.
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Previous MBA2693 Q&A Wednesday: Is Affiliate Marketing Still A Viable Business Model In 2025? Next MBA2696 Q&A Wednesday: How Do I Find the Best People to Hire On a Budget? Page updated November 6, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated
