616: The Black Friday Playbook We’re Using This Year

00:00
Welcome back to the podcast, the show where I cover all the latest strategies and current events related to e-commerce and online business. In this episode, Tony and I share everything we’ve learned about running Black Friday sales that actually make money instead of killing your margins. We break down the exact strategies we’re using this year in our own e-commerce stores to build hype without discounting the brand. But before we begin, I want to let you know that tickets for Seller Summit 2026 are now on sale over at sellersummit.com. And if you sell physical products online, this is the event that you should be at.

00:30
Unlike most e-commerce conferences that are filled with high-level fluff and inspirational stories, Seller Summit is all about tactical, step-by-step strategies you can actually use in your business right away. Every speaker I invite is in the trenches, people who are running their own e-commerce stores, managing inventory, dealing with suppliers, and scaling real businesses. No corporate execs and no consultants. Also, I hate large events, so I intentionally keep it small and intimate. We cap attendance at around 200 people,

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so you can actually have real conversations and connect with everyone in the room. We’ve sold out every single year for the past nine years and I expect this year to be no different. It’s happening April 21st to 23rd in Fort Lauderdale, Florida and if you’re doing over 250K or $1 million in revenue, we also offer a private mastermind for high level sellers. Right now, tickets are the cheapest ever gonna be, so if you want in, go over to sellersummit.com and grab your ticket.

01:28
Welcome back to the My Wife, Quit Her Job podcast. Can’t believe it’s the end of the year and Black Friday, Cyber Monday is right around the corner. Yeah. So we’re going to talk about what we’re doing about it, I guess. Yeah. So what’s interesting is we’re in mid-November right now and I have already seen stores pushing it. Have you? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Actually, there’s place. early this year. Like beginning of November. Yeah. Early. Yeah. Yeah. I think Black Friday is no longer a thing.

01:58
to be honest with you. Back in the day, I used to wake up early, go to my favorite store at like 5 a.m. and then rush through and try to grab as many things as I could. Right, so when you and I were probably like teenagers, early 20s, like that was the thing, right? You got up at four in the morning, you went to the mall or the Best Buy Plaza, whatever it was, Circuit City, Circuit City back then.

02:22
Right. You waited in line because they had the big screen TV. I remember one year like we were trying to get a router. Right. Because it was like the 90s. Like, you know, because it was like they were that stuff was expensive. But on Black Friday, you could get it for like 19 dollars or whatever. And then do you remember the progression of when stores started opening on Thanksgiving night?

02:47
Yes. So like I think Kohl’s was one of the Walmart and Kohl’s like started opening at like 4 p.m. on Thanksgiving and people threw a fit, right? Because it was just like you didn’t care about people’s families and the alternate argument was there’s a lot of people who don’t live by their family. So they were very happy to come in and work and have something to do, right? As opposed to being forced to take a day off. So that felt like a creep. But now I feel like I mean, you said I feel like

03:16
I walked into Sam’s Club November 1st and it was like all Christmas, right? Like just nothing but Christmas decorations. I’m just trying to think like the last, as long as I can remember now, you can walk into a store on Black Friday and it’s not that bad, period. No. And I think part of the reason for that is like Amazon has introduced prime days like multiple times. Everyone’s just kind of desensitized the whole thing now.

03:40
So let’s just back up a little bit about these prime days because I noticed this year for the prime days that happened I think in October, ah Target had their Target days, Walmart had Walmart days. So it looked like all of the major retailers were competing against Amazon this year, which I feel like that’s also crept in, right? Like think last year Walmart went head to head. I don’t know if Target did as much, ah but this year it felt like all of the big retailers were going

04:09
head to head on Prime Day, which happens in October. And to me, I don’t know. I’m also, I’m the person that shops on December 23rd and 24th, unfortunately, but I can’t imagine like Christmas shopping in the middle of October. Yeah, I mean, I hate shopping to begin with. Yeah, me too. But yeah, I mean, it used to be fun for me when there were actual deals, but. Yes. Well, we can talk about, we’re going to talk about it from an e-commerce perspective, I guess. Yeah.

04:37
But overall, the holidays for as long as I can remember, and this has been happening for like the last decade, it just keeps getting worse and worse and worse. Yeah, I feel. Yeah. So I feel like you and I are in an interesting spot because um Bumblebee and then one of the clients I have.

04:56
We don’t really sell giftable. Yours is a little more giftable. Mine are totally giftable now, actually. We started a whole Christmas Well, because you did your whole Christmas line. But before that, Black Friday for us has never been a huge… It’s always nice. It’s a bump, right? But it’s never been this massive driver of sales because people don’t give other people curriculum.

05:17
You know, as again. Well, no, Asian cultures, you do get Yes, yes, math. We need to come out with a calculus for Asians. Merry Christmas, SAT. SAT prep. College essay 101. But before you had the Christmas line, you were in a similar boat where it wasn’t like people were flocking to Bumblebee at Christmas time. But you actually I think you did something smart where you created something to sort of I don’t want to say drive false

05:46
you shopping. like you gave people a reason to come to the store over the holidays when typically maybe that’s not where they would shop. Yeah, I mean, thanks to Hallmark, there’s a million holidays and we them all covered now because we do print. Yeah. Which is I mean, that’s a pretty big change for you guys. It’s actually not because I mean, with the printer, you can print anything, right? Well, yeah, but like it’s a pretty big change in what you offer. Right. Oh, the offerings. Yes. Yes. Our skew count blew up.

06:15
Yes. As a result of that. But not from an inventory perspective though. Right. is nice. Yeah. So how long has it been? I can’t remember when you did that two or three years ago. So do you see a much a different Black Friday now that you have these giftable Christmas items? OK, so I think Thanksgiving has always been our biggest thing, not the actual Black Friday. Yeah. Because everyone comes to us and they buy like napkins and towels and everything. Yes. So our

06:43
Black Friday actually happens leading up to Thanksgiving. Yeah. Which I think is something to think about depending on what your brand sells is that your Black Friday might not be the day after Thanksgiving, right? It might be leading up to or around, know, so I think first of all, you got to get out of that whole like Black Friday is the day after Thanksgiving because honestly, no one cares about that anymore. People are Black Friday sales have already started.

07:07
Yeah, and I think the idea was you don’t want to be like one of the inbox emails on Black Friday. So everyone just started staggering everything to the point now where it’s not really Black Friday. Now in July, we’re getting the Black Friday email. But the other thing about Bumblebee, which I’ve always been very impressed with, is that you guys do not discount steeply. We don’t. And I think we’ve done the math or at least I’ve done the math. I don’t know if I’ve done on the podcast yet.

07:36
But whenever you discount, how much you lose is dramatically more than you think that you’re missing out on. And in general, if you’re gonna do a 15 or a 20 % discount, you better make sure that you can actually double your sales as a result of that discount just to break even. We’re not gonna do public math on the pot. Okay, we’re not doing the math, okay. No, we can, we can if you want, but.

08:01
Well, the other thing that I think is interesting and I was just having a conversation with our ads person about this is that ads are more expensive over Black Friday. It’s because there’s a lot more competition. so if you think about this, if you think about how you acquire your customer and maybe let’s just say you get 60 % of your customers from ads, which would probably be pretty normal for a lot of e-commerce brands. So you’re paying to get the customer, right? You’re paying for the ad.

08:28
you have a discount, so let’s say you’re discounting at 25%, so you’re losing money on the sale, you’re paying to get that person, like the actual cost of that is pretty significant, where you might think like, oh, look at us, we’re up 50K over this Black Friday period, but then when you look at your ad spend and the discount amount, you could be actually down when it comes to just pure profit. I mean, here’s what I’ve just come to know from just going to

08:58
various e-commerce conferences and talking to people who just run Facebook ads for a living. A good return on ad spend is like 2X for old customers, right? One and half to 2X. Well, if you tack on a 25 % discount, those type of funnel ads probably are not gonna be profitable. So you gotta make it up on the backend. Actually, even at like a 2X return on ad spend, chances are you’re probably breaking even, right? And so already, you need to make up for it on the backend.

09:27
Depending on how much your product is obviously. The other thing that I’ve noticed, and this is just from my own personal experience looking at, from when I had an e-commerce store and then from other people that I’ve worked with, is that a lot of times those customers that you do acquire on Black Friday through the ads are not sticky because they’re either buying a gift for somebody, they’re buying because they saw the ad and it’s a promotion, but they’re not like your standard customer. So you can’t also afford to spend extra money.

09:56
to get them because the chances of them coming back and making another purchase are probably lower than someone who finds you throughout the year. And I know your store, you obviously, not everyone gets married multiple times. So you have some general issues with, and a lot of people do, right? They sell one-time products. I think about Mike who used to sell treadmills. I’m sure people aren’t buying two treadmills, right? You’re buying one treadmill.

10:22
more places to hang their clothes. Yes, yes. They need more closet space. get to. But there are there are products that like you probably don’t buy again. But for companies that do have like repeat customers, I feel like those Black Friday customers that are acquired through ads actually aren’t the best people to come back and buy again. It’s really hard to you have to work to nurture those people to get them back. We see that a lot because people are buying stuff as gifts.

10:51
And so, you know, if they buy a true giftable to give to someone else, chances are they’re not going to come back and buy homeschool curriculum. They probably don’t even homeschool, you know. So what do you guys do? Do you turn off ads over the holidays? We don’t, because I think the owner would murder us. But uh no, I mean, I’m sorry. Not not turn off. But do you dial down like the top of funnel stuff? We’re dialing down this year for the first time because of some really. Yeah. Traditionally, we just up the retargeting and we kind of dial down the uh

11:20
Yeah, the cold, the cold ads. And then it’s just all email and SMS for us. Same for you guys in general. ah I’m not sure exactly the percentage versus like cold to retargeting, but I know this year we’re trying to do a better job with that. However, we just launched a whole set of games and we launched them last month and they actually did really, really. In fact, we sold out of a game, which.

11:46
I don’t think we’ve ever really sold out of a product during a launch. That’s pretty crazy. What type of game is this? You will not be able to relate to this at all. It’s actually a really cool product. I don’t know who on the team came up with this, I think there are, e-commerce, you get these products where you’re like, this is a winner. This is gonna crush. And so this was one of these. And the creatives on this were fantastic. So it’s a magnetic bookshelf. So it’s a…

12:15
picture of a bookshelf that’s magnet so it can stick anywhere. And then it has each book of the Bible and they’re color coded by like where they would come in the Bible, like as far as like the Bible has different labels for the books. I know you don’t know any of this. And so kids can basically, well, I would say most people probably don’t know this. It’s not you. So basically, know, like Old Testament, New Testament, but then within the Old Testament, there are different like categories. And so kids can basically put the books of the Bible in order on this bookshelf.

12:44
And it helps them learn basically the books of the Bible, the order, you know, kind of gives like an overview, but it’s really fun. Right. And all of our creatives, they did stop motion photography for these. So it basically shows the little books like climbing into the bookshelf. so it’s like the creatives were like, it’s like one of those things where the product is great. The creatives hit the copies good and it doesn’t exist. Right. Like this product is not out in the market. Right. So people went.

13:12
Like the first day I saw the numbers and I was like, we are running out of this. Like we are, and I was like, if we can keep this until the end of the launch sale, it’ll be a miracle. um So we kept it to the end of the launch sale, but we’re out, we’re basically out right now, which means we don’t have it for Black Friday, which stinks. Cause I feel like this could have carried like the whole company. um And then after the game sale ended, we actually increased the price from the retail price, like to see.

13:41
So it was regularly $20, it launched at 14, we put it to 25, sales didn’t really decrease. So I was like, oh, maybe we can keep this at 25 when it comes back in stock. Because it’s a little more expensive to make. Magnets aren’t cheap to make, I don’t know if you know this, but they’re a little bit more expensive than just the standard paper type stuff. But yeah, so.

14:06
But we have some other pretty fun games that we’ve released in the past year. And so I think that that will actually help get people to the site because the games are interesting and fun and the creatives this year and the photography uh really make it look, I don’t wanna say better than they are, because they are fun, but like it really tells the story a lot better because I think with games, right? Like that’s kind of tough. It is tough because you gotta educate them what the game is, right? Yeah.

14:32
And so I think just everything was in a really good spot. The listings were good. The creatives were great. The products are fun. uh And typically we don’t like what like no one wants math for Christmas. So now we actually have products that people would buy and put in their kids stocking or under the tree and stuff like that. So I’m just curious, how much AI do you guys use to create these things? Or is it just still all old school?

15:00
I don’t know who listens to this podcast. We do not use any AI. I have been pushing for AI actually for the last several months. ah I think after talking to Ritu, our friend Ritu um at Seller Summit, and then once again at ECF and seeing what she was creating and then also all the stuff that Dana Michelle is doing.

15:28
I so on my list of things to do is actually create some like I’m not sure if we could have done the stop motions really fun. I’m not sure how great that would have done with AI because there so many like there’s 66 pieces right of the magnets. But I do think there’s a lot of things we could do with AI that we’re not doing right now um that would one free up like creative designers time and. um

15:56
You know, I do think that this this comes down to probably some hesitation on the team’s part about like one, the quality, which I understand that because there was a time when, you know, you try to make a dog and it had five paws and two tails and all that stuff. But also, like, it’s changed so much in the past couple of years. And then I also feel like there’s the like, I don’t want it to take my job kind of feeling.

16:25
Well, it augment your job. So I actually used VO3 for the first time yesterday to do some B-roll for one of my YouTube videos. And it got it right on the first try. Yeah. Which I was shocked at. Yeah. I think it’s at VO3.1 at the time of this recording. Yeah. So my son is actually super into creating AI cartoons.

16:48
that basically are like funny and or they they’re either making fun of one of his siblings like he makes a cartoon about something that they had happened to them in their childhood um or he makes them based on something else that I can’t talk about. But um anyway, I told him he said he sends them to me like all day long. And I was like, do you not have a job anymore? Like, what are you doing with all your free time? But I told him last night, I was like, make a TikTok account and put these videos on there. And so he did ah because they’re actually clever and

17:16
Anyway, so we’ll see where it goes, but it’s all cartooned. You know, it’s not real people or anything like that. But I feel like we that’s like something that I will push for huge in twenty twenty six because I feel like watching Dana Michelle, I know we’ve talked about this before, watching her give that lesson on how to create this. I feel like Dana Michelle knows how to do this in part because she worked for the movie studios. Right. And she is a.

17:43
video editor and so she understands all the components you need to make it look great. And so I feel like that’s the same thing with design. Like I need a designer to tell me, to give me the idea to make it look better. A designer is always going to create something in AI probably better than I can because they understand the language, right? And I’m not a designer. So for me, I don’t see this as a threat at all. I see this as a way to create so much more assets, right? And not…

18:13
you know, not have to do stop motion photography for everything and things like that. um 100 % agree. 100 % agree. I just wanted to take a moment to tell you about a free resource that I offer on my website that you may not be aware of. If you are interested in starting your own online store, I put together a comprehensive six-day mini course on how to get started in ecommerce that you should all check out. It contains both video and text-based tutorials,

18:40
that go over the entire process of finding products to sell all the way to getting your first sales online. Now this course is free and can be obtained at mywifequitterjob.com slash free. Just sign up right there on the front page via email and I’ll send you the course right away. Once again, that’s mywifequitterjob.com slash free. Now back to the show. So one thing that we’re doing this year, so we always do a 12 days of Christmas sale. m

19:08
This is we should be doing this in prior years, but I’ve actually gone back now since I have bumblebot Did I tell you I created bumblebot? Yeah. Yes for my store It’s basically an AI that knows all the sales and everything So I went through and I looked to see which of those so each day for the 12 days of Christmas still we heavily discount one item Yeah, every day for 12 days So I went back and I looked at the sales of some of those items and some of them didn’t do that Well, some of them did fantastic

19:37
And so what we’re doing now is we’re taking the ones maybe that didn’t do so well. And these are all items that we kind of want to liquidate anyway. We’re thinking about creating 12 days of Christmas bundles with those to boost up the average order value. And for the ones that do well, uh we’re actually raising the prices on those and then discounting them. I mean, we raised them a while back already. yeah, so we should be able to make more money off of that 12 days of Christmas sale.

20:07
but just looking at what happened the prior year. Yeah, so I love bundling. I think that’s a really great way to uh improve your average order value. But also the one thing that I’ve found with bundling for us is that we have most of our margins are insane, right? 80, 90 percent. They’re really great. But then we have these kind of products like the bookshelf, right? The Bible bookshelf where the margin is not as great, right? Because we can’t sell this thing for $40. Maybe we can at this point, but like uh

20:35
You know, we know our customers are price sensitive. So what we found is if we bundle a, you know, item that has a worse margin with something that like we have this, actually it’s a really cool Bible timeline. And it basically goes through the whole Bible and it’s like, also you can kind of understand like chronologically, like what you’re reading. And it’s super popular. It’s one of the most popular products on our site. But the margin on that thing is like 98%. It’s like insane.

21:02
Right? So you can bundle them together and give a small discount, right? Like for bundling, but then you sort of even out the margin on the bookshelf product. So we’ve been doing that with some of the games because like board games are actually really expensive to create. I actually don’t understand how like Target and Walmart can sell board games at like seven and $8 during Black Friday because our cost of goods on a board game is like $9, right?

21:30
I mean, obviously, Monopoly. all it’s all volume. Yeah. Jesse was on this podcast. Oh, yeah. Yeah. The price breaks. Yeah. I mean, once you start creating, I think at Target’s levels, it’s like dirt cheap. Well, yeah, yeah. But it still shocks me that like the board itself, you know, the whole thing, the shipping, the space it takes up all that stuff, which is why we like to create card games because they’re very affordable. They’re like 40 cents, 50 cents, you know, kind of thing. um But.

21:58
So yeah, so we’ve bundled to sort of offset the costs on higher products, which people really like because they still are getting a deal, right? But then it’s helping us sort of balance out our costs with that. So I like the bundling. think it’s great. um We keep doing it more and more because it keeps working. And people, what we found is when we start promoting those bundles, people are like really interested in them.

22:27
I didn’t even know you guys sold board games. We just started, like this is very new. Ah, okay, okay. I’m actually the voice in the back going, can’t do board games, they’re too expensive. You know what’s expensive about board games is the little pieces that you use to like go around the board. Those things are like really expensive, um which you know, it’s funny, like it’s really expensive, but it’s like $2, right? Like it’s not, it’s expensive when you think about selling it.

22:57
The other thing when you were talking about the 12 days is one thing that I’ve learned about these customers that I’m dealing with is that um they love that flash deal. So where you discount, um let’s just say the Bible timeline, we’ll say that. That’s like $9. We sell it for five. So it’s like almost 50 % off. Crazy, crazy deal. Even if they don’t want the timeline, they click over.

23:25
Like the engagement rates on those emails and SMS is like so much higher than other ones because and they don’t necessarily like one time I actually went and like looked at how many people actually bought that exact product versus, you know, a bunch of other products. Most of the time they buy a bunch of other products. They actually don’t even buy that one product. But they’re so like, you know, oh, my goodness, what in the world? Five dollars, you know, five dollars is like our our

23:54
Email point, if we can say $5 in an email, people click, we know that. um And so for us, having that one item discounted is actually really profitable because people might buy that, which is fine, but they also buy a bunch of other stuff because we get them on the page and then, you know, they convert. Here’s a tactic you might like. I actually stole it from Mr. Beast. OK, so what he did was he sent out an item for a discount.

24:23
And in the email itself, he had five different images. And he said, if you click on the right image, in this case, I think it was a cup of coffee. Only one of the icons holds the discount. So what ends up happening is everyone clicks on all of them, right? And you have them go to different pages, but then your click through rate for that email and the engagement goes through the roof, which improves your deliverability for the rest of the year. Yeah. Oh, I’m trying to think of a way to do that without angering.

24:52
Well, there are people. mean, they eventually get the discount. Yeah, yeah. Right. Yeah. We just have we have an audience with like a little bit of a less sense of a sense of humor. OK. But I think that’s fantastic idea. Like I do that a lot with. So I do it differently where it’s like, hey, are you having a great, you know, Thanksgiving season and it’s like a thumbs up or a thumbs down?

25:15
They both take you to the exact same page. But like people click, right? Like they think they’re voting, right, on the thing. But I love the idea of like the discount takes you, because that would definitely get people to click. And they eventually get the discount. And then the follow up email is how many tries did it take you on the last one? And then they give out something else after that. That’s genius. So I like that one. Yeah.

25:42
I did try it once and the click through rate on that email went through the roof. It’s not something you can use all the time, you got to pull that out. But if you pull it out on Black Friday, you know, right before you’re going to send 12 straight emails. Yeah, you know, that’s a good one. We do the another way to not discount. We do discount at Black Friday, so I don’t want anyone to go, you do. I mean, we do. But one of the things that I really like is the free gift with purchase.

26:10
um So we do this in two different ways. So every month we actually have a free gift. And what we’ve moved to this year is basically these gifts are exclusive to that month. You cannot buy them. You only can get them if you make a purchase. And they’re pretty fun, right? Like right now our free gift with purchase is a New Year’s Eve countdown pack. And it basically is…

26:32
balloons and confetti and little pieces of paper and you write things on the piece of paper and put them in the balloons and then every hour up until midnight you pop a balloon and confetti and whatever you’ve written on the card, know, whatever. um that’s one of our most popular ones that we’ve done. But they, you know, we’ve done things like lunchbox notes for your kids, right? Little love notes that you can put in your kid’s room or in their lunch or, you know, in their backpack or whatever. um

26:56
Last month we had, it was like a gratitude jar kit. So it was basically, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the gratitude jar where like people, they just take like an uh old pickle jar or something and they put things that they’re thankful for or grateful for people, things like that. And then they like read them out at Thanksgiving. um So we had like a fun kit where you could like decorate the jar and it was, you know. So you guys ship out an old pickle jar? we don’t. You have to provide your own jar. it had everything. So they’re all like, and the goal is the goal for these free plus purchase items is

27:25
that they cost less than 20 cents to make and that they’re flat pack, right? So that if you put them in a box, you’re not having to like have this, you know, thing that’s gonna change the shipping size of the box or the shipping side, shipping box size. ah So anyway, these have been really popular and what we found is at first we started this to liquidate stuff, right? Like we can’t sell stickers. Let’s give everybody a pack of stickers with the purchase. But then we really pushed towards like, let’s create special items that

27:54
will really move the needle for people. um So, you we have some really fun ones coming next year, like one of the ones next year that I think we’re launching over spring break is like a car bingo. So basically if you’re traveling for spring break, there’s like all the things that you X off and try to get bingo. And it comes with like 20 sheets of bingo cards. So like, you know, it’s enough for a road trip. But these have been like, we have people, one lady was doing local pickup. She literally made like 10 orders.

28:23
to get like 10 of the gratitude packs. 10 separate orders? Yes. Were she paid for shipping each time? Well, no, because she picked, she was local pickup. Oh, local pickup, got it, But she wanted him to like give them to all her family members. So she went through, which, know, I mean, that’s not exactly how we want it to work. But we know that tells us that like, hey, we’re on the right track with, you know, the products and getting people excited. So do you do it with no threshold whatsoever or? We do it with, it’s any purchase.

28:53
Not digital, just physical products, obviously, because we do have digital products. But then during certain months of the year, specifically like Black Friday, and then we have a big back to school sale in the summer, we offer a $100 or more, you get a tote bag. And it’s our custom tote bag, people love them. And so what it does is since stuff’s on sale, it boosts their order value, right? Because what would be a $75 order is now like a $50 order.

29:22
So this is getting people the incentive to get to that $100 threshold. So I’m just curious, during Black Friday, do you do that in addition to the free with purchase? Yeah, so you get both. So you get two items. nice. I mean, you gotta spend 100 bucks to get the tote bag. Oh, no, no, I know, but for the free with purchase, like we have some stuff in our store that’s like two bucks. Yeah. So it wouldn’t matter how much they spend to get that free item? Yeah, yeah. mean, they have to pay shipping too, obviously. Sure, yeah.

29:52
So, but we know that the tote bag, um had a different, we’re doing a custom tote bag now every year too, to just add to the value of it. um We have people ask if they can buy it all the time, we don’t sell it. We’ve kind of gone back and forth on whether we should. Next year, the tote bag’s really fun. This year, I felt like it was a little boring, but people still really like the tote bag. um

30:14
People do anything for free bag and the bags are pretty inexpensive to create. Like if that’s something you’re thinking about, like tote bags are kind of the way to go. For the high threshold. you guys have those separately made then just for this? You don’t sell them normally, right? No. No, just for this. She also uses them at convention for people who buy over a hundred dollars, which is really nice at convention because you can put everything in the bag and walk around with it as opposed to like the cheap plastic bags that you normally get. So that’s why. then so that’s a really good one.

30:44
that we, you it started with us just trying to get rid of the extra things, right? Kind of like with you with the one day sales, but then it’s now moved into like a full strategy of, you know, how do we create these like exclusive items that people can only get that month and just to get people to shop more frequently, right? Like, get people back to the store and, and spending money. Yeah. I’m trying to think. So you guys aren’t heavy. What’s the biggest discount that you guys give?

31:14
It’s very heavy. Oh, it is heavy. Yeah, very heavy. It’s the early bird discounts close to 40 percent. Wow. OK. Our biggest discount is only 15 percent. I know we are never. Yeah. I know. Actually, on that day, like a whole bunch of people buy because they’re like, hey, this is the only time this ever going to happen. Yeah. And that’s probably a whole other conversation about discounting. um I don’t love that. But I also know that it like we do have margin to do that. And.

31:42
it does move the needle. We do double the sales, right? So we hit that. So yeah, but yeah, I would love to have less of a discount in general, but that’s not my call. I think for your products, it works. Yeah. But there’s people out there where their margins might be like 50%. Right, that does not work. And if you give like a 20 % discount off of that, that basically kills your profits. Yeah.

32:10
We can go to about 35 % off and still be at an 80 % margin on most products. That’s right, because it’s just paper, right? It’s paper, yeah. So anyway, I would like to maybe have a slightly different strategy, but at the end of the day, you know. I mean, it’s working. It’s working, yeah. Yeah. And it’s growing the sales. You know what’s funny is I always think about it

32:38
maybe in the wrong way, but I think about it as you’re doing a lot more work for less money, mainly because we run the sewing machines and everything. And I’m just thinking to myself, yeah, this, cause I actually hate, every season I hate Black Friday. I hate the holiday season, cause that means I gotta go in, everyone’s on deck. And then like, it’s just a madhouse for like two weeks straight. And then we to relax afterwards. Yeah, you know, it’s kind of funny that you say that.

33:06
Of course, when I was in e-commerce, really liked Black Friday because it was like, this is a trip. The sales on Black Friday pay for my entire family to go to a tropical island. the one thing, like this year, I have a doctor’s appointment on Black Friday, which was, that’s not a big deal, right? So was like, no problem. And then in my mind, it’s like on this part of town that I really like, and it’s like kind of close to my house, but I don’t go there a ton. And so was like, oh, I could go to my doctor’s appointment. Then we could go get brunch or blah, blah.

33:35
I’ve got this whole idea in my head and then I was like, I can’t go anywhere on Black Friday. I got to get right back home to my computer and make sure that nothing’s broken and that the emails are going. I was like, oh, why did I think that I could do anything fun on Black Friday? So now I’m like, oh, I hate Black Friday. Let me ask you this. Do you guys text every day? We don’t text every day because our people are very personal privacy. Yeah.

34:03
So we text, let me see, I just did this yesterday. I think we sent four texts over like nine days, which is a lot. That’s what we started doing. like last year, I remember for the first time, I was like, yeah, what the heck? Let’s just try texting every day and let’s see what happens. People started getting a little annoyed. Yeah. Yeah. I think if I had giftables, 100 % I would text every day. Like I would I would probably be much more aggressive. But because I know that people, if they’re shopping on Black Friday, they’re just stocking up to get a deal.

34:33
Right. It’s not because they’re going to give, except for like the games, the few things that we have, they’re not going to give someone a P.E. workbook, you know. Right. Hey, kid, looks like you put on a few pounds from Thanksgiving. Here’s a math workbook curriculum. Maybe only text the Asians like the math workbooks or whatever. Can you segment for that in PostScript? Oh, just all the California area. Northern California. That’s how I know. So are you guys doing anything different this year?

35:00
You know what’s funny is like I listen to a lot of e-commerce podcasts and everyone always does like a big BFCM thing leading up to it. But yeah, really it hasn’t changed that much at least from what I can notice. What about you? We are doing some different things this year. uh So the first thing we did last year, but we’re continuing on it this year. And I got this idea from Laurie at Passionate Penny Pinscher, where I think she’s the one that I saw doing it years ago where it was like.

35:26
you send an email out and you’re like, there’s 22 codes of this, there’s six codes of this. It’s basically the Mr. Beast strategy just in a different way. Let’s be honest, I go adjust those codes all day long. No, no, no, I know exactly. You don’t want people to come in. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So we’re doing that. That worked very, very well. The other thing that I started doing, think sometime this year I tried it and I was like, oh, adding this to Black Friday is sending an email out at like 7 p.m.

35:55
basically saying free shipping till midnight, right? So it doesn’t kill you with the shipping, but people go bananas. Like I think the last time I did that in an email, the email made like $30,000. Really? Okay, so just free shipping for that one day? shipping, but like literally five hours of free shipping. So it’s not like you have, because I feel like the other problem with this time of year is that if, and we send emails in the morning, so I’m not saying not to do that, but you send an email at 6 a.m.

36:22
it’s competing with every other email that got sent around that time. And so people are like, they see your email, they go to the store, they look, they don’t do anything, then they see the other email, and then they see another company, and then they see another company, and then by the end of the day, they forget. And so maybe they come back and buy later, because they get an abandoned card or a browser abandonment, but the urgency of this deal only happens for five hours has actually been super effective for people. Even on days where we don’t have like,

36:48
great open rates, because certain days are just not as good for us. It still converts really, really well. So I’m curious about the codes, because this is something that I think I made it a lesson for profitable online store, but I don’t do it myself. Do you let people enter in a coupon code that doesn’t work? No, because if it’s sold out, yeah, I do. That’s what I meant. So let’s say you’re down to the cheapest one now. You want people to actually enter in.

37:16
Yeah, you actually want people to enter in three coupon codes incorrectly. You know what I’m talking about? I mean, I guess I do. Yeah. OK. And it’s been fine. We get like, OK, so we have a huge email list close to 300 K when I don’t send that email to everybody. Actually, that email I send to a very specific segment of people. So let’s just say I send it to 50,000 people. We probably get three people emailing customer service complaining, which seems like that’s worth it. I don’t know.

37:43
The only reason why I ask is like people can’t spell like I track every time a coupon code doesn’t go through like it literally emails me. Oh, interesting. Okay. And so like if I get like a whole flood of emails, like people can’t spell like the easiest coupon codes and then they get frustrated sometimes and then they leave.

38:00
One of the things that I did to because I go back and forth about the coupon code thing a lot because part of me wants to have like the coupon code that’s like Z 7 6 7 X P whatever. Yeah, because that feels like it’s because whenever I say this is exclusive to you, people feel like that is exclusive to them because it’s like this jumble of letters and numbers. also no one like especially on mobile, it’s harder to copy and paste and all that exactly. um So I always make sure the coupon is you know how in Shopify. Well, in Shopify you can link that they can click on that and it

38:29
automatically applies the coupon. Correct, yes, yes. Yeah, so that kind of helps with the, so when they get to the cart, the coupon’s already been applied if they click on, so I try to make every link in the email that link. However, when you do the five coupons in an email, right, you can’t do that. So I try to make the coupons as absolutely basic as possible. It doesn’t, it’s not foolproof, right? But like if it’s additional 5 % off, the code is add five. If it’s an additional 10%, it’s add 10, like the number 10. um

38:58
If it’s free shipping, it’s free. Literally, the code is free, right? Like I try to like eliminate because I know people don’t people cannot spell. cannot type it all. One time our coupon code was like Mother 25, right? Yeah. People were like, M-U-T-H-E-R. Yeah. Mother MTHR Mothers 25. was like, Oh my God. Yeah. Anyway, that’s why I was curious about that strategy. Yeah.

39:26
So the other thing that we’re doing this year that’s brand new, we are totally, I have like, this is gonna flop, but you have to try it, right? We’re live selling this year. Oh, who’s doing that? The owner’s doing it, yeah. So she’s great on camera. it’s not, that’s not gonna be an issue. um There was, it’s not playing out exactly how I want it. So how I wanted it to happen is,

39:55
She live sells, there’s 10 items. Those items have better pricing, like basically during the live sale and throughout the rest of the day. Okay, walk me through this. Are you guys using comments sold or? No, we’re literally like just sending people to a landing page with those 10 products on it. Oh, I see. Yeah, because I don’t want to try to integrate comments sold. I mean, that would definitely be the easiest way to do it. But also, I don’t know if her customers know how to do that. So that’s true. There’s one link. The link has the 10 products on it.

40:23
So it’s not the main sale page, it’s a secondary page, which also I’ll explain that fiasco in a minute. um So she’s gonna do this the Friday before Black Friday. So it’s like the 21st. So basically we’re hyping it up in social, we’re hyping it up in email, click here, she’s gonna go live, she’s gonna have the 10 products. They’re all products that you can give as a gift basically. So we’re not really promoting anything that’s like, and also get your,

40:51
a handwriting book for your child with their terrible penmanship. um What I wanted was this special code that basically was only good that day. However, we want to run ads to this because it will actually probably do really well with ads. And so if the code’s only good for that day, then that’s not, we can’t do that, right? Because it can’t be time sensitive. So we can’t really have a code.

41:14
um Which is the part that I think is annoying however I do understand the component of running the ads to it because we’ve had a lot of success when She goes live for anything running ad set especially to get people to opt in and things like that So I understand like the pros and cons of doing it each way um However, I would like to do it at some point with a code Because I do think that would be really effective and also a really great way to track like exactly people who came from the live

41:42
Okay, walk me through this. You go on this page with her face on it going live and then there’s 10 products. Is she gonna be out, can anyone just buy the product at any time at that big discount and just leave? Or do you have to wait for her to say the code first? nope. Because there’s no code now. It’s just at the Black Friday discount. So she’ll go live, she has 10 products, she’ll talk through each product. The goal is to get the live to about 45 minutes.

42:08
talk about why you should buy it, talk about how giftable it is, they’re all sitting there, it’s all branded, it’s in the warehouse, which I actually think is a huge selling point, right? Because people will be shipping, uh all the products are behind her, like on warehouse shelves and things like that. uh One of the big things if you’re gonna do this, this might impact your customers, we cannot have any boxes that say China on them.

42:30
Like, you know how those products come? So it’s a part of the warehouse. doesn’t have the shipping boxes in it because people get really been out of shape if they see China on the boxes. However, I’m like, do you not think everything comes from China? I don’t know. But that’s neither here nor there. um I kind of like this idea. And I’m wondering if I can get my I guess I could. You could. I want to try it because I know it works. We have friends that are very successful at this. Right. Like, yeah. um

42:59
I think of like, even like, we obviously talk about Paul and Tiffany a lot and they’ve made their whole livelihood on live selling. But think about like Kelly Snyder, right? Who has a digital course and product but sells accessories, right? She goes live multiple times a year and she calls them trunk shows and she sells jewelry pieces and accessories and things like that. And it does really, really well. uh And she’s also, once again, great on camera. So I think, you know,

43:27
Having Kim, the owner, which I think is another big thing, right? You’re the owner of the company, you’re telling people what to buy. That’s impactful, right? You’re talking about why the products are great, you’re talking about your value prop. So what are you doing? You’re helping your social media, right? She’s gonna be live on Facebook and I think on YouTube, right? So you’re helping the Facebook algorithm, which is where we run all our ads, right? So then we’re gonna run ads to it. It’s gonna improve that. You’re gonna get people commenting, interacting.

43:54
We have people that will be on Facebook, like monitoring, responding to comments, answering questions. um And then that video can live throughout Black Friday, right? It’ll live for the next week, all with these giftable products, right? So the exact thing that we think people are probably gonna be wanting to buy from us. um So I’m excited about it. I would like to, at some point, try it again with a coupon code.

44:20
to like special discount off those products so we can really track who came from the live. But the problem is, that’s not as evergreen. um I think the coupon code is gonna be problematic unless the link, I can say like, I can see her just spouting out the coupon code and then people using it. But again, like the same issues, there’s friction. Yeah.

44:42
So and then the other strategy, so we’re not doing the coupon code. So that’s out for right now. So the strategy is talking about it on social media, letting people know she’s going live. We’ve talked about throwing in a free gift if you buy that day. So basically just having them throw something in the box. Like mystery, right? Not. And then you could probably pack, how fun would it be, you can just pack it on the fly. Ooh, that’s a really good idea. That’s a really it into a two hour live or three hour live. Yeah, I like that idea.

45:11
I’ll have to add that to our list. So if I were to do this, I would have to do this though. You would have to do it. So then the other thing is so, you know, promotes on social promotes on email. It’s also a way to like talk about stuff on social and email that’s different. Right. We’re not just like discount buy. It’s like, hey, I want to talk to Kim about what to buy for Christmas. Like, here you go. Well, plus you can actually give a demo of the product and like.

45:36
Yes, especially since it’s a lot of games and stuff, like the demos are good. And then basically what we’ll do is look at email stats from the emails that talk about her going live and then basically send like a watch the replay, um you know, basically retarget people who clicked on any on that page. Right. So if they went to that live sale page, you know, retarget them an email. So I think there’s like a big strategy around this and I’m excited about it because it to me, it’s like different than what

46:06
99 % of people do, right? There’s obviously clothing boutiques that go live all week, right? I think Tiffany and Paul are giving away $50,000 on Black Friday. It’s some insane thing, right? All I know in my feed is Tiffany holding up wads of cash all the time right now. I was like, don’t know what promotion they’re running, but they know what they’re doing. But in our space, in curriculum and homeschool products, nobody’s doing this, right? So it’s completely disruptive.

46:34
knowing that Kim is good on camera, that risk is kind of removed. She went live the other day to test it, basically talking about some new products. So she didn’t sell anything, but just kind of tested the setup, tested the camera, all that thing. I don’t know. I’m excited about that. think that’s gonna be… If nothing else, I think it’s a good practice to do it and see how people react and potentially…

47:02
What’s your tech setup gonna be? Is it just gonna be like for the chat? It’s just gonna be Facebook chat. Oh, Facebook chat. Yeah. Okay. So that’s the only place you’re broadcasting live. I think we’ll also broadcast to YouTube. That’s a separate chat then. Yes. Yes. But we have people to monitor that. Oh, I see. Oh, so you’re not gonna let them see the chat on this on the page. It’s gonna be wherever they’re watching. Yeah, wherever they’re watching. Yeah, I see. I see. It’ll also probably be embedded in the page.

47:31
When like both chats, YouTube and Facebook. No, the video will probably be embedded on that sale page. Right. But, you know, I would say the chat, like I said, this is a very janky setup for the first time because we haven’t done this before and also didn’t want to invest too much resources in it if it completely flops. um It’s not going to flop. It’ll do fine. I don’t think so. But you know what I mean. It’s like this is the beta. Yeah. Oh, these are things I wanted. I guess if Jen and I went on together, we could play off each other.

48:00
But I’m pretty sure she’s not gonna be on board for this. I think she would maybe do it with you. Maybe. I think that’s fun. Yeah. Well, fun for me. She doesn’t like doing these things. No, I know that about her. But I think any time the owner or the head of a company, whatever it’s if it’s a figurehead or like the brand face, I think any time they can come on and talk to the customer is really impactful.

48:30
for people. No, agree. 100%. Yeah. It’s like I fly Delta a lot now and that one of their videos, it starts with the president of Delta right now. Obviously he didn’t find found Delta, right? Because Delta’s been around for 100 years. But just the fact that he like starts the video off like.

48:49
For some reason, I immediately, do you ever watch the safety video? I don’t. I don’t, I don’t. I’m like, I know how to work the life vest, I know, blow, pull, activated light with water, I know how to get the slide out, whatever. But he starts talking and I was like, oh, it’s the president of Delta, I wonder what he’s gonna say. It immediately changed my perspective. And I actually watched 90 % of that video, because they start the video off talking about they’ve been it now, they’re the oldest airline. So there’s a good story.

49:17
You know, he’s he’s he’s looks like your typical CEO of a big company, right? So he’s not super relatable, but like at the same time, you’re like, oh, it’s interesting, right? So I feel like it’s just a disruption and you got to do something during this time to get people’s attention. All right. I know we got to wrap it up. I’m going to bring I know I’m going to bring this up tonight. OK, good luck. We’re cheering for you. But I like that idea, Adam. Actually, it’s it’s one of the newer things that I that I’ve heard this year, like going live. So cool.

49:47
See if I’ll let you know how it goes. Hope you enjoyed this episode and best of luck on your Black Friday sales this year. For more information and resources, go over to mywifequitterjob.com slash episode 615. And once again, tickets to Seller Summit 2026 are now on sale over at seller summits.com. If you want to hang out in person in a small intimate setting, develop real relationships with like-minded entrepreneurs and learn a ton, then come to my event. Go over to seller summits.com.

50:15
And if you’re interested in starting your own e-commerce store, head on over to my wife, quitherjob.com and sign up for my free six day mini course. Just type in your email and I’ll send the course right away via email.