Nov 27, 2024 · 35m · startup-ideas
How This Guy Makes His Entire Year's Revenue in Black Friday WEEK
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
Greg Isenberg and Jonathan Courtney break down high-converting Black Friday marketing strategies across SaaS, e-commerce, and luxury brands. They reveal how businesses can generate substantial annual revenue through value-add bundles, gamified promotions, store credit psychology, and revenue-share agency models without relying on generic price discounts.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Greg holds 23.9% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Greg as informed peer 4.0 Guest teaching 4.0 Guest disagreement 1.0 Greg pushing back 0.8
speaking balance: gold is Greg, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 3:24 Jonathan's contrarian reframe on Black Friday revenue
Jonathan playfully interrupts and replaces Greg's conventional aphorism with his own blunt framing that a strong Black Friday can salvage a full year of strategic business mistakes.
Hardest push from Greg ▶ 27:35 Greg cuts off Jonathan's extended agency monologueGreg stops Jonathan's lengthy tangent about his team's operations with a dry, humorous reality check: 'I don't know if I asked for your life story over there.'
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 11:30 Jonathan details progressive welcome gift stackingJonathan explains the underlying mechanics of AG1 and Magic Mind's campaigns, teaching how escalating physical and digital gifts convert late-stage buyers far better than direct discounts.
Greg holds their own ▶ 15:35 Greg pitches the specific store credit psychologyGreg demonstrates sharp eCommerce expertise by explaining why offering specific non-round credit sums (like $21.63) outperforms standard percentage discounts, prompting the guest to save it for immediate agency use.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Greg as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Greg pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Power and Misconceptions of Black Friday Sales | 3 | 4 | 2 | 1 | Jonathan outlines the massive revenue potential of Black Friday sales and reframes common misconceptions held by premium brands. Greg engages with lighthearted banter about pronunciation before establishing the theme of internet sales. | |
| SaaS Renewal Strategies: The Endel and PlayStation Model | 1 | 5 | 1 | 0 | Jonathan walks through how subscription apps like Endel, PlayStation Network, and Whoop leverage Black Friday for annual renewals rather than solely new acquisitions. | |
| Sponsor Break: Boring Marketing SEO Services | 2 | 6 | 1 | 1 | Following an ad break, Jonathan details Magic Mind and AG1 welcome gifts and progressive gift stack strategies. Greg asks about alternative marketing strategies and jokes about German UI. | |
| High-End Brand Strategies: Apple’s Gift Voucher Model | 7 | 4 | 1 | 1 | After Jonathan explains Apple voucher strategy, Greg presents a tactical alternative using specific dollar store credits instead of percentages, which Jonathan immediately screenshots to share with his team. | |
| Product Bundling and Cross-Brand Partnerships: GrowthDay and Aesop | 5 | 4 | 1 | 0 | Jonathan introduces GrowthDay and Aesop bundling concepts, and Greg extends the idea by suggesting cross-brand partnerships using zero-marginal-cost digital products. | |
| Gamified Bundles and Advance Prep: Four Sigmatic's Interactive App | 4 | 5 | 1 | 0 | Jonathan showcases Four Sigmatic interactive bundle builder app and notes the necessity of summer preparation, while Greg spots the SaaS opportunity to build it as a Shopify app. | |
| Promo Break: Greg Isenberg’s Startup Idea Bank | 6 | 4 | 1 | 3 | Greg pitches creating a dedicated Black Friday agency, prompting Jonathan to explain performance fee arrangements before Greg playfully roasts Jonathan for telling his life story. | |
| Gamified Email Marketing: Bodega’s Missing Code Treasure Hunt | 6 | 2 | 1 | 2 | Greg shares a creative streetwear email campaign by Bodega that gamified coupon codes as missing character treasure hunts, then teases Jonathan for being distracted. | |
| Shopping Habits, Steam Sales, and QVC-Style Live Stream Funnels | 5 | 5 | 1 | 0 | The pair discuss Steam sales, personal buying habits, and modern QVC style livestreams, designing a pre-event registration funnel with locked discount codes. | |
| Episode Conclusion and Final Takeaways | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Greg wraps up the conversation with friendly nicknames and compliments while Jonathan clarifies why he shares playbooks publicly. |
Statements from this episode (12)
Courtney: Companies Making $200k-$500k Monthly Can Generate $1M-$2M on Black Friday
“Just to give you a feeling like a company that's making, let's say 500 K a month or 200 K a month could make one to two million dollars in just this week.”
Courtney: A Great Black Friday Sale Can Salvage an Entire Year
“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.”
Courtney: 2023 Black Friday and Summer Sales Rescued AJ&Smart's Financial Year
“At 20, 23, we didn't have a great year. Like we, 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 exp…”
Courtney: SaaS Companies Should Push Discounted Renewals During Black Friday
“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.”
Courtney: Pure Discounts Often Fail Without Value-Add Free Gifts
“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.”
Courtney: Gift vouchers let premium brands discount without cheapening products
“And I think that's like a really great way to not cheapen these high quality products and like these kind of, you know, high end products while still technically giving you a discount.”
Isenberg: Brands should offer specific, non-rounded store credit over percentage discounts
“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 gonna give 20 dollars off, right? Instead of saying you have 20% off, because everyone is saying you have 20% off, th…”
Isenberg: Partnering to bundle third-party digital products creates zero-cost value
“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.”
Courtney: Black Friday service providers should pitch clients starting in August
“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 some, for some other clients, or you could build that for clients. You need to be reaching out to them approximately Augu…”
Courtney: AJ&Smart manages Black Friday campaigns on pure revenue share
“We're so with what we're doing just for transparency, we're only taking a cut of the money that's made. So it's kind of like it's not a no brainer cause we take a big cut, but it is kind of a no brainer because they, these companies weren't going to run these …”
Isenberg: Bodega Gamified Email Marketing by Sending Incomplete $200 Promo Codes
“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 dollar Bodega gift code in this email. Lik…”