MBA1926 Why We Stopped Doing Black Friday

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Visit Dell.com deals. Hey oh. Welcome to the $100 MBA show, the business podcast that takes you to school business school that is every single day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher, Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of Webinar Ninja, an independent software company I started with my co founder back in 2014. And in today's episod, you'll learn why we decided to stop doing Black Friday. Listen, I get it. Black Friday is big business for a lot of businesses. Some of you, your customers, might be waiting for Black Friday for a special deal they're waiting to buy on Black Friday or Cyber Monday. But I want to share with you my experience as a business owner and why I decided to do the opposite, why I don't want to do Black Friday anymore and what we're doing instead as a team. That this is beyond economics. This is beyond the concept of when should I run a sale. This is really about recognizing maybe you're not doing something right for your business, having the courage to say maybe I don't want to do that anymore, maybe I should do something else. Reminding yourself that this is your business and you can do what you want. And of course, the trade offs. Every decision has trade offs and we'll talk about those as well. If you ever thought maybe I don't want to deal with Black Friday as a business, you're going to be interested in today's episode. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business, okay?

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Our team at Weather Ninja and the 100 NBA are no strangers to Black Friday or Cyber Monday. In the past we've run different deals, some of them really helping us grow our revenue big time. But in some years we didn't run a Black Friday deal and a lot of it just has to do. Why, you might ask if it did well for your business and you made money and some years we just didn't run a Black Friday deal. Why, you might ask? That doesn't make sense, Omar. You made money on those days. You're making sales. That's good business. Well, like I mentioned at the top of the episode, every decision you make as a business owner has trade offs. What is the cost of running a Black Friday sale? For me, there are two big costs. The first one is actually business related. By running a Black Friday deal or a Cyber Monday deal. Whether you want to admit it or not, this is just the facts. You are training your audience not to buy any other time. This is a well known fact in buyer psychology. In fact, there are businesses, there are brands that are known for this. They know that they run these huge deals on Black Friday and people don't buy their thing, whether it's their course or their platform or even products at their store. You also send the message that your products are not as valuable as you say they are every other time of year. And a lot of that has to do with the fact that people expect huge, deep discounts and deals on Black Friday. And yes, I know that you can swing the deal and you can put up some pretty creative packages. We've done it before with bonuses and extra freebies and I get it. But at the end of the day, you are discounting your product in some way or you are devaluing the bonuses that you're offering. So you think about the brands you respect the most, the high quality, high end brands. They do not run Black Friday Cyber Monday deals. Apple does not have a sale. Some of the top software companies and platforms do not run these sales. And there's a reason they don't want to be a part of this movement of discounting their products. That's trade off number one. Trade off number two is just the cultural values of Black Friday. And this one was really hard for us to swallow. I never really felt comfortable being part of that time of year and the practice of Black Friday. Now I'm not saying every company is doing this, but generally it's a holiday, it's a sale, it's a time of year that encourages overspending, consumerism, a lot of waste. That's just not good for the environment and the world we live in. And if I'm being totally honest, I kind of turned a blind eye at this for years and I said, yeah, yeah, but you know, it's good for business. But when Black Friday was coming around this year, I sat down with my co founder, my partner in life, my partner in business, Nicole, and we were just like, we gotta do something different. I don't want to do Black Friday. It's just not aligned with our brand and it's not what we want to do for our reputation as a company. And I can only speak from my own experience. I'm not saying this is what you should do. I'm saying if you feel the same way, you might want to take a look at what we've done as an alternative. One of the things I'm really passionate about and is a core value of our company is we want to have a sustainable business, we want to have sustainable practices, meaning we want to tread lightly on the earth. We don't want to waste, we don't want to do anything that could tax the earth in any way as much as possible. And we don't want to encourage people to spend money just because it's time to spend money. We want people to sign up for our products and services because they need it and they're going to use it no matter when that is. So what we decided to do at Webinar Ninja is we are now celebrating something totally different on Black Friday. We're celebrating Green Friday and this is something that we came up with as an alternative. And instead of encouraging people, hey, look at this crazy discount. Come and buy it. Buy five of them. We're saying, hey, if you happen to buy our Service our product webinar Ninja between, you know, Friday and Monday, including Cyber Monday, we're going to plant trees on your behalf. In fact, everybody who signs up for any paid plan will get 20 trees planted. We teamed up with onetreeplanted.org to make this happen. If you want to take part in that, awesome. If you don't want to take part of that, also awesome. But as a company, we're like, hey, we're willing to put our money where our mouth is. We were willing to do something to help our world and help be more of a sustainable business. And this kind of culminated. Through the last few years, you know, the last year or so, we've been really trying to look at different options in terms of how we deploy our code and servers that is more energy efficient. We've moved to that system, which is fantastic. But the point here is that we decided we want to do something that is more aligned with what we believe in as a company. So it's sort of like a compromise. If you are looking for a reason to buy Ark service on Black Friday or Cyber Monday, here's a reason. We'll plant trees for you. And we're even sending out digital certificates to everybody who participated in Green Friday showing how many trees we planted on your behalf. Now, do I think all businesses should do this? I'm not going to tell you what's best for you. You have to make your own decisions on the trade offs you have to make for us. It took us some time to get to this point. Took us seven and a half years to get to this point. We've run deals in the past, but now we're at the point where we feel like we need to evolve, we need to change. And what we used to do just is not aligned with who we are today. And it's just another reminder that this is your business. You get to do what you want to do. You don't have to do anything really. And your customers will respond positively. Like, we've gotten some really great emails from our customers saying, hey, I love this idea, this is fantastic. I have a newfound respect for you. And of course some people are not gonna be like super enthusiastic and be like, oh shucks, I thought we're gonna get some major awesome deal Black Friday and it's not what they're expecting. And that's okay, you gotta be okay with that. And we're at the point where we're okay with that. We're like, listen, we're not gonna please everybody. So knowing that, let's do what's right.

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To wrap up today's lesson, at the end of the day, we made a decision. We no longer want to do Black Friday. We want to make a new tradition. Every year we're doing Green Friday and our hope is in the lifetime of this business that we're able to plant thousands and thousands of trees just because of one decision we made back in 2021. Listen, trees are gorgeous. They give us shade. They're beautiful. So even if you don't believe in any of that or you don't agree with that, it's a positive thing to plant more trees. Having said that, as an entrepreneur, as somebody who has been fortunate enough to be in a position where I can make decisions like this that can influence and impact the world in any way, I feel proud to do that. I feel obligated, given that I have this opportunity, that I should do it for the good of the world, for the good of the people around me. And I'm a believer that, hey, if you give enough, you will get enough. Thanks so much for listening to the $100 MBA show. If you love what you hear, hit subscribe so you don't miss an episode. Tomorrow we discuss five low cost ways to increase revenue. We're talking about things you can implement pretty much tomorrow. Make sure you subscribe so you don't miss it. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. Listen, it's not easy to go against the grain. I mean, my inbox is flooded with Black Friday deals, Cyber Monday deals from all these companies that, you know, I like and respect. And I know I'm leaving money on the table. I know that I could have cleaned up and made, you know, a lot of revenue. But I'm looking long term. I'm looking how much profit will I make over time? I'm looking at, am I going to be comfortable with the kind of business I've built? Am I going to attract the right people to join my company that have the same values? Am I going to attract the right customers? All that kind of stuff. You know, it's so easy to kind of just think of the here and now. But at some point in your entrepreneurial career, you got to start thinking long term. And I believe that this is the right decision for us long term as a company and as a brand. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care. Of.

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