SPI 954: My Team Says I’m Going Too Far for Black Friday!

SPI 954: My Team Says I’m Going Too Far for Black Friday!

Liz Wilcox: Oh my gosh, hello my friend. Liz Wilcox here, and you are listening to the Smart Passive Income podcast. Lucky me. Today, I wanna give you my thoughts on Black Friday. I know the last few years it’s been a little controversial, Black Friday, right? But in an effort not to bury the lead, I love Black Friday.

Black Friday, my dear, has made me hundreds of thousands of dollars. Literally, at this point, it might even be close to a million bucks. It’s insane. Insane from one day in the last few years. Ugh, so no matter what I’m selling on Black Friday, I am gonna make some cash, and I want you to as well. But first, before we get into it, can I ask you a question?

And I want you… I know you’re probably driving or doing the dishes or something right now, but when you get a chance, I want you to leave a review and tell me what you think I should call myself. So as you know, I’m still, like, the new, new-ish owner of smartpassiveincome.com, of this podcast, and back in my personal brand, lizwilcox.com, they call me the Fresh Princess of email marketing.

If you’ve ever seen me on YouTube, like, I’m looking at my camera right now, and behind me I see two pictures of The Fresh Prince, Will Smith. I even have my microphone on top of a Will Smith book right now. Like, I love The Fresh Prince. It’s one of my favorite shows. But I, I feel like I need to grow into a new title here on the SPI podcast.

So I wrote down a few on an envelope, on my insurance envelope here, and you tell me. Again, leave a review. What should I… Like, if I’m introducing myself like, “Hey, friend, this is blah, blah, blah, Liz Wilcox.” Like, this is the Passive Income Princess, the Superfan Concierge, or the Online Biz Girl Next Door?

Like, what? Like, I’m trying to come up with a fun, catchy name for myself, but I need your help, okay? All right, back to the show. Let’s talk about Black Friday, and I wanna talk about some downsides or some red/yellow flags, and this might be like some objections in your head. First and foremost, you might feel pressure to offer deals you can’t afford.

Big discounts are really popular. They’re the norm during Black Friday, so you might feel like some pressure, but I’m here to tell you, Black Friday is not about just throwing a discount on something and praying for the best, and you’re gonna … People will be lined up like it’s JCPenney’s in the ’90s, right?

No. Black Friday is more about showing up with a solution. Yeah, you can give discounts. I, I love a discount. I love a discount. Shout out Sam’s Club. Shout out Costco, right? Love a discount. But you don’t have to, and again, it’s all about showing up with that solution. So I want you to maybe pause the podcast here and think about something you can offer.

What are some offers you have? How can you package them up to really showcase that you have a solution. And I’m gonna talk about mine in a little bit and what we’re doing here at SPI for Black Friday.

Now, another little red yellow flag could be short-term profit margins. They might be lower than normal, right?

If you normally sell your journal for 20 bucks, you’re gonna give it away for 50% off, that profit margin is really low, even if your sales are high. So you’ve really got to make sure the math is mathing, as the cool kids say-would say. That’s what my 15-year-old, that’s what my 11-year-old says. Oh my gosh, she’s almost 12.

Ugh, Chelsea, where did the time go? All right, back to Black Friday. Stay on track, Liz. The third red or yellow flag here that I could see for you is if your email list or your following is small or it’s kind of broken, you don’t feel as connected, it might feel like you’re going to put in a lot of work for not a lot of gain.

Now, this one, though, I want you to s- tell yourself that it’s going to be worth it, even if you only make one or two sales. I need you to go through the motions this Black Friday. I want you to tell yourself, “I am just launching. I am just going through Black Friday to go through Black Friday because I am a business owner, and that’s what business owners do. I am going to learn so much from this Black Friday offer, from launching this Black Friday sale.”

Speaking of you launching, last red yellow flag here. Everybody and their mother has a sale, so you might have some tight competition. But again, this is no reason to panic, and this is no reason to opt out.

Everybody and their mother is having a sale because it is worth it, because you have a duty, you have a responsibility to your business and to your customers, your potential customers, your future customers to sell to them. Why wouldn’t your people want a deal on Black Friday? If you can help with XYZ and you’re going to give them XYZ for a discount or a bundle or a…

You’re– they’re going to get extra bonuses, oh my gosh. There’s a reason why everyone and their mother is doing this, and you got to hop in on it too. Now, why am I telling you you got to hop in on it too? Why does Liz, the Passive Income Princess, the Superfan Concierge, your online biz girl next door, why do I think you should do it anyway?

I’ve got four reasons, and then I’m going to talk to you about what SPI is doing for Black Friday. It’s really exciting. A really exciting, never before seen. We’re gonna get into it. But first, why you should do it anyway. Number one, absolute no-brainer, potential like whoa, this is the largest shopping day of the year, and I’m not talking about just for North America, in the entire world.

Again, everybody and their mother nowadays, it’s 2026 and beyond, right? Everybody’s doing Black Friday. I don’t care if you’re in the Southern or Northern Hemisphere, you got this sale going on, and we do not want to miss out on the biggest shopping day of the year. If I told you any other time of year, oh my gosh, did you know more people pull out their credit cards, more people get in their cars, more people go on sales websites than ever on this day?

Would you wanna hop in that wagon? Of course you would. That’s Black Friday, baby. Let’s hop in. The second reason is it’s exciting. There’s energy and buzz about it. Oh my gosh, everybody’s doing it, and not to use the word herd mentality, but there is a bit of herd mentality, right? And we w- again, we have this duty, we have this responsibility.

You want to be a business owner. You wanna be an entrepreneur. How do I know this? Because we actually put out a survey, and we asked, we asked you, what do you call yourself? Do you call yourself a content creator, an entrepreneur, an influencer, something else? What? And the overwhelming … I’m talking about more than half of the people that filled out the survey, AKA you on the email list, AKA you listening to this podcast, said that you identify as an entrepreneur.

So it’s your duty to get behind this energy, get behind this buzz, and do the dang thing. Sell something. Okay? Now, if you are identifying as an entrepreneur, but you don’t feel it, you’re just saying it right now, you’re trying to do this fake it till you make it, which by the way, I always say believe it till you become it. That’s a little quote right there you could pull out.

We’ve gotta practice selling. If we’re gonna be a big boy, big girl entrepreneur one day, a big pal entrepreneur one day, we’ve gotta practice selling. So use this as an opportunity. Even if you don’t feel ready, you feel kind of cringe, like your body language is tensing up just thinking about selling on Black Friday, consider this your practice.

You can practice selling without worrying about being sleazy because folks are more receptive around this time of year. Okay? It’s actually like so super exciting for you to … It’s like going to a parade, and you’re standing on the sidelines, and there’s somebody throwing out candy, throwing out beads, and then they say, “Oh, come join us. Like come on, come on.” And they pull you into the parade, and now you’re in the parade throwing candy to the children, et cetera, et cetera. Like that is the game we’re playing for Black Friday, so practice selling. I wanna give you another little story. You know, I gave you the parade analogy. That was kind of fun, right?

I’m picturing our little Christmas parade in our town. I’m so excited for it. My, my 15-year-old’s gonna be in it this year. So excited, her first parade. Anyway, another story I wanted to tell you is every year I have a word of the year, and back in 2025, my word of the year was practice. And everything that I did was just practice.

It wasn’t for the real thing. Like, I was dating this guy, and I’m a single person, so clearly, you know, I don’t have the best track record. Like, I’m trying, but I’m, I’m a little obsessed with my work, if you haven’t noticed, going from one podcast episode to three a week. You know, I just… And doing three livestreams a week, sending out emails.

I, I love my work. Th- this is beside the point. I’m getting way off here. Maybe I’m the, the princess of tangents. Anyway, my word of the year was practice, and I just practiced being in a relationship versus trying to think, “Oh, is this the end-all be-all? Is this… Have I finally met my house husband? What?” And then even going to yoga, they even call it a yoga practice, right?

So every time I went to yoga, it wasn’t, “Oh my gosh, I can’t believe camel is still hard for me. I can’t believe standing bow didn’t work for me today.” I was just practicing. And even on Black Friday, I was like, “Okay, this is my Black Friday strategy,” which is gonna be in the next episode. Sandy, our marketing manager, our marketing lead, is gonna walk us through the strategy for Black Friday this year so you can steal it and make it your own.

Even with Black Friday, I’ll… I’m just practicing for next year, and it just takes this weight off of you. And so if you’re really struggling with sales, I really recommend checking out, trying out Black Friday because it’s, it’s, it’s just practice. You’re gonna practice selling without w- having to worry about being sleazy because those folks are receptive.

And the last thing is this is a great opportunity to up the percentage of customers on your email list. My number one metric that I care about, the very first question that I asked Pat about the actual business, was, “What is the percentage of customers on your email list?” And so this is a great opportunity to up that percentage, to get a lot of customers at once.

Black Friday, when you do it right, when you’ve spent all year working your audience, growing those relationships, creating super fans, Black Friday can really be less of a trickle and more of a flood of customers, okay? Last year, I think I got something like 400 new customers in a matter of five days.

Amazing, right? All right, so let’s recap those. Four reasons you should do Black Friday: Largest shopping day of the year. It’s exciting. There’s energy. There’s buzz. You can practice without being salesy or sleazy because folks are more receptive. And then it’s a great opportunity to up that percentage of customers.

Now let’s switch gears and talk about what does the SPI offer? Why are we offering it? Let me take a sip of water. Hang on Okay, are you there? I hope so. This is the exciting part. This– Oh, my gosh, I can’t believe we’re doing this. Everybody on the team, I’ve got four people under the SPI team. Everyone is like, “Liz, we should not do this,” which is exactly why I want to do it.

I’m a bit of a contrarian. Okay? So here’s the Black Friday offer and why. It’s a lifetime deal to both my products over at the personal brand, so all that email marketing stuff I’ve created, that membership you’ve heard me talk about on several episodes, all of that stuff, and all of smartpassiveincome.com stuff.

So all the courses Pat has ever created and all the courses that I’m going to create in the future, lifetime access. Never purchase another digital product from me again. We’re only selling five hundred of these bad boys. It’s called a lifetime pass. It’s gonna be eight hundred dollars, and we’re gonna have some payment plans available.

I’m still finalizing those. And lifetime means lifetime. It doesn’t matter what we offer in the future as far as memberships and digital products go. You’re going to get in. You have a pass. It’s like if Disney World sold a lifetime pass. You make one payment, you can get inside the park for free the rest of your life.

All right? Oh, I’m getting fired up. I cannot believe we’re gonna offer this. It’s gonna be epic. So it’s all the products of lizwilcox.com, all the products of smartpassiveincome.com, eight hundred bucks. But remember, there is a kicker. Five hundred only. I’m only offering five hundred of these bad boys, and I’m hoping I can sell two hundred and fifty to my personal brand email list and two hundred and fifty to the SPI email list.

I haven’t merged those email lists yet. If you have an opinion on how I can do that, email me. I wanna know. But I’m so excited about this. But the only thing that is excluded are, of course, live in-person events and higher ticket services. So all the digital products, all the digital events, free. But let’s say I wanna bring back a mastermind or Pat did with the former CEO, Caleb, a fast track like accelerator in twenty twenty-six.

If I wanna bring that back with like monthly coaching, in-person events, one-on-one attention, you know, really service-based offer, that’s not gonna be included, okay? ‘Cause that’s, that’s higher ticket, that’s higher touch. You know, I can’t very well give you a ten thousand dollar a year mastermind for eight hundred bucks.

I can’t very well continue to host events if everyone that comes has a free ticket So those, hopefully that makes sense why those aren’t included, but I am gonna give discounts to those. So lifetime members will get discounts anywhere from, like, 20% to 60% off. It will depend on the product or the service, excuse me.

But whatever memberships we have, like right now we have a SPI Community. Right now I have email marketing membership. If those change, if those merge and two are tweaked and prices raise, whatever, you still get them for free as a lifetime pass holder. Ooh, I’m so excited. I’m so excited, especially knowing what we’ve got coming up for 2027.

Oh my gosh, it’s gonna blow your mind. Like, we’re doing challenges, we’re doing… I’m getting ahead of myself. I think I already have where I’m gonna talk about this stuff. So anyway, I’m get– I’m going off script. Let me get back to the script. I’m really excited, and I wanna share with you, like, why I feel confident in this as an offer.

So I have done a lifetime pass in my own business, in my Liz Wilcox personal brand, and I started selling that in 2024, which was about three years after having my membership, after really being known for digital products. And the first time, I made about $34,000 in a month. Like, I sold it over a month, and it was $400 at the time.

Oh my gosh. I was like, “Wow, $34,000? Move over, Jeff Bezos. It is over for everybody. I just cracked the code.” Then I sold it four months later, and I made another thirty-five thousand. So almost… It was $400, so almost the same amount of people. Then in November 2025, so about a year after I sold it the first time, I upped the price to $500 and made about forty thousand in sales.

And I’ve sold it three times in 2026, and I’ve been telling people… I’ll caveat before I give you the number. I’ve been telling people every time I sell it Hey, and this especially before I could announce that I was the owner of this podcast, I said, “Hey, this lifetime pass is going to go up in price. Get it now for $500. I cannot tell you why it’s gonna go up in price. Just know it’s gonna go up in price because it’s gonna go up in value.” AKA, they’re about to get all of Smart Passive Incomes, all of Pat Flynn’s stuff included. And so I kept hinting like, “Hey, you’re gonna get some more stuff.” I even said like, “Oh, it’ll be more than email marketing.

It’ll be on podcasting, on short form, on long form content, on how to build a website, how to do this, how to do that,” like all the things Pat has or had that I now have. And I have been able to, at the time of this recording, make $169,921 Holy crap. I know a lot of you listening, and maybe even most of you listening, raise your hand if, if you could make that money in a year, you would be happy, right?

I’ve made this money this year. The year’s not over. I’ve made this money with one offer. I have other offers. I think at the time of this recording, just for lizwilcox.com, we’ve made over four hundred thousand dollars, maybe close to four fifty. I don’t know. I don’t wanna exaggerate. We’ll say closer to four hundred.

I don’t wanna exaggerate. I don’t wanna make numbers up. But it’s insane, you know, like not half of it, but like forty percent of that has been from this lifetime deal, and I can honestly say that this lifetime pass has helped me purchase the podcast, purchase the SPI brand. So why though? Why have a lifetime deal?

Like, isn’t that a little stupid, Liz? Like, why are you cutting off… You said that the percentage of customers is so important to you, Liz, but, like, once they buy the lifetime pass, they can’t really buy anything else, right? Like, why cut it off? Isn’t that a little crazy? All right, I got a few reasons. I got a few reasons for you, and the first one I already kinda mentioned.

The main metric for any business is the percentage of customers measured by the email list. So the SPI email list, it’s old. This Kit account is old, all right? Pat’s been around for eighteen years. So I’m unsure of that number. I even asked when we were in talks of buying. I said, “How many people on your email list are customers?”

There’s so many tags and segments and custom fields that it was really hard to find that number. So in my mind, I’m just starting from scratch. I’m just gonna tag the people I know that have purchased in the last six months from me, and I’m just gonna start moving from there. And just for full disclosure, full transparency, after losing those seventeen thousand subscribers, if you know, you know, we’re at about sixty-five thousand active subscribers on the list.

So I’d like to get half of those people as customers. Half of those people. So, like, thirty-three thousand people I wanna make customers And so far, I’ve probably made 5 to 700 of them customers in the last six months. So I’ve got a long way to go, right? So it’s why I am doing the lifetime pass. I want as many customers as possible, and it’s why I’ve been doing things like the vault.

So if you’re not on the email list, you need to get on there. Link in show notes, okay? We’ve got an all-new, brand-new lead magnet where I give you a year of posts and post ideas for emails and social for free. Join the list if you haven’t gotten it yet. Anyway, I’ve been doing these things called, like, get out of…

You remember the vault? The Disney vault? Like, it’d be like, “Aladdin coming out of the Disney vault,” and you could buy Aladdin for a certain period of time. That’s what I’ve been doing with Pat’s courses because I just want to up that percentage of customers. And I wanted to create an offer, oh my gosh, a lifetime deal for both memberships of Liz’s, both websites of Liz’s for 800 bucks.

That’s crazy, right? Like my lifetime deal was $500. SPI is worth way more than $300. One course is worth more than $300, and you’re about to get 15 of them if you’re one of the 500 that gets it in a few weeks. I just want an easy yes from people. Like, “Oh my gosh, I know this is a deal. I know this is a deal of the century.

Yes, yes, yes, Liz.” Okay? Because I’m trying to increase that percentage of customers. The second reason is I’m the new owner. A lot of people don’t know Liz Wilcox yet, right? And I even need to do a better job on this podcast of telling you stories about what I’ve done, and why you should follow me, and how I can help you.

And so I know for the last six months, seven months of owning this membership, owning this podcast, owning this brand, the team and I have worked so hard to grow internally to make the membership, to make the products better, to make it more accessible, et cetera. Now it is time for the world to see it. I want as many people in there as possible, not only to get that customer percentage up, but to see what I’m doing in the community, to see what the team is bringing.

Because I’m telling you, there’s no membership like the SPI Community because of all the things we’ve worked on the last seven months. So now I need you to see it, too. I need people to come in and say, “Oh my gosh. Look at all these amazing things that Liz has brought. I’m into it.” And keep people talking about Smart Passive Income.

And then to layer onto that, the third reason is I’m thinking about next year. We have a lot of new programming I’m excited about. We’ve got network nights, virtual and live events where you come and you create and you plan and you create some more, possibly a book club with action items after each chapter so you’re not just reading, you’re doing.

Like, we are really moving in this direction of Team WIN, where WIN stands for what’s important now and helping you get what’s important now done. And so I need folks who aren’t just gonna join the membership for a month. I need long-term customers to get in there, start taking action, start seeing results, start telling their friends, and create this flywheel.

I need to get the flywheel going. And so creating a super fun sort of no-brainer offer that is a lifetime deal. People that have lifetime deals tend to use them at least for the first 12 to 18 months, ’cause they’re like, “Oh, I bought this resource. I’m gonna go look at that resource first to see if it has what I need.”

And guess what? This resource is going to have what you need, especially because it’s going to combine LizWilcox.com with SPI right? So excited. And last, and this is me just being super transparent, that’s one of my values, is maybe this is a little fun for my ego. I love to do things that other people simply refuse to do.

When I told my team we were gonna sell this for eight hundred bucks, they were like, “What? Both memberships, both businesses, both products, like eight hundred bucks, Liz? I think we should raise the price.” And this is exactly why I think the lifetime deal will work because it is such a good deal. It is kind of a crazy decision, so I want to put my crash test dummy helmet on and see what I can see.

All right, my dear, have I convinced you that Black Friday is worth a shot? Have I convinced you that Black Friday can be fun? Like, I am fired up for our lifetime deal. I am fired up about the price. I think it’s an incredible price. We’re gonna offer payment plans, only five hundred available to make it a little more exciting.

I want you to create something like this too. And if you need help getting your offer and idea solidified, it is not too late. If you want help writing those emails and creating the offer and all of that during, uh, the sale before, during, after, you already know Liz Wilcox is here for you. I’ve already done that.

I’m gonna put this in the show notes. I have a link to a Black Friday training. No pressure, but you can buy it now and get instant access to this one-hour training, and then it’s gonna give you all the templates you need to write out your offer and s- actually sell it. I’m really excited for you to come up with your genius offer, the offer that you would do a whole podcast episode around because you’re so excited about it.

So you can head to the show notes and get that Black Friday training. That is it for today, but stay tuned for next week because next episode, Sandy and I, head of marketing at SPI, are gonna talk about the strategy behind actually selling the goals that we have for the event more in depth than I already shared with you.

And, uh, it’s gonna be super, super fun. So stay tuned for that. As always, come back and share in the reviews of this podcast how this episode helped you get closer to your passive income goals. I’m Liz Wilcox. You are awesome, and I’ll meet you at the next episode of the SPI podcast.