In this episode of the Rooted Business Podcast, Jess and Rachel get real about the pressure online business owners feel every year as Black Friday marketing season ramps up.

Because let’s be honest: Black Friday can feel like a “must-do” moment—especially when you’re watching everyone promote sales, push urgency, and talk about “money left on the table.” But is it actually the right move for your business?

We’re breaking down Black Friday through a grounded, sustainable lens—so you can make a decision based on strategy, capacity, and alignment (not FOMO).

In this episode, we cover:

1. What it feels like to launch when you’re already at capacity (and how imposter syndrome shows up in real time)
2. The reality of Black Friday competition—big-box retailers, massive teams, and huge ad budgets
3. Why discounting can backfire (and how businesses train customers to wait for promos)
4. The #1 thing we don’t recommend discounting: your 1:1 time and services
5. Two key Black Friday rules:
6. don’t introduce a brand-new offer during Black Friday
7. don’t discount anything that requires high-touch delivery
8. Better alternatives to discounting: bonuses, bundling, positioning shifts, and strategic planning
9. How to decide if your ideal client is even paying attention during Black Friday
10. What to do instead of a Black Friday sale: Q1 planning, reviewing data, and building smarter campaigns that actually convert

If you’re a service provider, coach, freelancer, or online business owner trying to build a sustainable business—this episode is your permission slip to opt out of hustle and choose what’s best for your energy, your customers, and your long-term growth.

We’re rooting for you. 🌿

Meet Your Hosts

Jessica Walther is the founder and CEO of The Launch Collaborative and Sustainable Success Systems. As a launch strategist and systems consultant, Jess is dedicated to helping solo business owners and small-but-mighty teams build businesses that deliver both peace and profit. She specializes in creating sustainable growth strategies that align with her clients' values and lifestyles.

Rachel Lopez is the founder and CEO of Gal Marketing Agency, a boutique email marketing and strategy firm. With over a decade of experience, Rachel helps heart-driven entrepreneurs craft intentional marketing strategies that attract, nurture, and convert leads sustainably. Her human-first approach ensures that marketing efforts feel authentic and effective .

Together, Jess and Rachel blend systems, storytelling, and soulful strategy to help you grow a business that's deeply aligned with your life—not just your revenue goals.

Connect With Us:

Jess Website

Rachel's Website

Learn with Us

Get Jess's Sustainable Success Systems Starter Kit, a Notion Business Management Systems that takes your business from overwhelmed to organized with 4 foundational workflows. <<Learn More Here>>

Diagnose Common Launch Problems and Fix Them Fast! Get the Launch Cure Guide : https://www.thelaunchcollaborative.com/launch-cure

Get Rachel's Guide to a High-Converting Email list to learn 4 shifts to elevate your emails & embrace sustainability in your marketing. <<Get it Here>>

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All right.

Happy Friday.

How's it going, Rachel?

I saw that you just put your new creation out into the world.

So first off, so proud.

But how does it feel?

Yeah, it's like that.

It's a weird alignment of.

And I'm trying to like have Jess in my brain thinking about, focus on capacity and set realistic goals and I'm trying to maintain that side of this launch.

But ultimately, like, I literally hate launching.

And I don't know if anyone will recall from the conversation in the capacity episode where I was talking about there's a decision to move the business forward or a decision to take on more retainer clients.

And I had a choice to make and I made a non choice.

And so here I am with a ton of retainer clients and two that are actively launching this week and here I am launching a program and zero energy to do it.

So I'm like, why do I not listen to my own advice?

I know, I think it's interesting because I've never really done a real launch for myself, but I've been behind the scenes for a other launches.

So I'm sure that energy and what you have to put out, like balancing because most of the time my clients are balancing like they're one on one clients as well.

So like trying to figure that out and navigate it.

But you did make a choice.

You made a choice because we said you either get to.

You did decide.

I'm just going to go through and I know it's going to be hard and I'm going to be over capacity or maybe working more than what you wanted to.

At first the program is out there and I think it's like hardest step is to get it out there because then collect all the fun data of, you know, actually doing it and learn from it.

Launch and grow.

Yeah.

So.

And I think one of the topics we're going to talk about today is the competition side of things, which is we're diving into the reality of Black Friday and kind of bring that into what I'm currently experiencing, a very large online business.

I actually know who you're talking about because I saw her program and I was like, oh, this is kind of what Rachel.

When I looked at your program and looked at what her program is, I was like, this is kind of what Rachel is doing.

Oh yeah.

When I tell you I nearly scrapped the whole program just because I was like one.

I don't want to come out looking like a copycat, but I've been working on this for six plus weeks now and I Don't like actively follow her stuff.

So I couldn't have known that was something that she was leading towards.

But it's a very similar program.

Obviously she has the authority, she has the reach.

And I'm sitting here in total imposter syndrome being like who am I to.

Launch a program like this?

But I know it's like my bread and butter and I know that it's like what like when I tell you the content for this just flowed out of me, that gave me the nudge to move forward with it.

But all the freaking feels are happening right now and I'm just.

That's so crazy because I had actually gotten out of this person's world that we're.

That I'm pretty sure who's launching the same thing you're launching and some stories and I got sucked back into it and I've been actually attending all of her lead up content for their like, like fly in the wall, like watch me build.

I would be very interesting to know her human design because she's doing what I think every manifester should do is like she's taking you behind the scenes of her actually building out the program but selling it to you at the same time.

One I think is so much like there has to be so much intentionality about like in planning behind like obviously she's probably got pretty large team around that.

But I just find the way that she was launching it so interesting and so thought out.

But also no like the vibe that you're bringing and the vibe that she is bringing is completely different.

And like your vibe attracts your tribe kind of thing.

There's so many people that are attracted to you and I think that you can, I think, I mean obviously this person, I don't really say copy her but take what.

Take some inspiration from her and I think you'll be able to not take inspiration from her.

There's some things that like positioning wise that I think, oh, like this is really smart.

I even said that I'm like, oh Rachel, like when I was reading through your sales page this morning, I'm like, oh, Rachel should come position it like this.

Because that way for this for me I'm totally signing up for Rachel's thing.

And what basically this program is that we're like dancing around is Rachel is gonna help you create this sales funnel that will you know, bring new leads into your nest one autopilot in a very intentional way.

So I think if you're someone like me who's finally and I came out with my new Offers yesterday, nail down your offer that you want to sell and well, how do I get people into kind of like my sales funnel sales podcast because right now I'm hearing cricket.

So Rachel's program is going to help you one build the funnel that would need to nurture them.

But then it's also what are the other social media like avenues and stuff?

Like how do you get people on top of funnel as well?

And then also newsletter strategy, which is something I think it's so funny because I have a newsletter right now that I say I send it out every Tuesday, every edited.

I was looking at my email software yesterday and I'm like, I have sent out an email once a month.

Like once a month.

And I'm like, I say that I do it every one, but it's because I'm starting and I'm not listening to my own advice of starting that like planning.

And I think it was because I like hadn't nailed down what offer that I was selling and now, now that I know, oh, this is what I'm going to focus on selling.

And I need to sell.

I like wanted to make a hundred k this year which I know is like an arbitrary goal, but I was like doing my little math scribble system like the key micro retainer client.

You know, how many of these new offers do I need to sell?

I need to sell 4.5 and then I'll hit my goal of reaching 100k this year, which will be exciting because the first pattern will ever make a hundred k in my entire life in one year.

Because that has.

Yeah, I'm definitely joining Rachel's program.

One two is.

It's gonna be like, I know because you are a smaller creator.

Course creator at this point.

I know I'm gonna get all the attention and I know Rachel, it's not gonna let me walk away without something fully built out and working.

And like I have that trust in you.

Where when I was looking at this other program I I looked at her program and I was like, nope, I'd rather work with Rachel one on one to help me do that.

Everybody's feedback has been is that I won the level of support in mine.

I think it's her secondary tier of like upsell.

It is the same that you're getting in mind kind of things.

Yeah.

So definitely like more hands on and it's like more.

It's less about sales in the sense because people's email lists can do things beyond just generate sales sales.

It can help them like hack the algorithm.

So if you're a content creator and your reach is low, like getting your content in front of your people on the email side of things can help you like bypass that stuff.

It can help you nurture like high ticket leads.

And it's less about like passive sales than it is about like intentionality in the longevity of your business.

Like how much work do you actually want to do in creating content to make lead generation easy when you can reverse engineer effortless, like nurturing on another side.

So everybody keeps telling me that they're like, we hear you talk about these things and we hear your vibe and your energy and like the way that you're so passionate about it and the level of support is like significantly more hands on and like for a no brainer price is what I would think.

Yeah, no, it really is what you're like, one on one offer was at this price point.

But then you're also actually helping us get it done too.

Yeah.

And that's the thing that's like literally.

Yeah.

I have so many people where I'll do this privately with them and I will give them the strategy and the outlines.

And because it's a one kind of co call situation, it's up to them to implement.

And that's the biggest downfall is I know I need this, I know I need to get it done and then, oh, it doesn't happen.

So the accountability that's built out into it is very intentional too.

That's like, no, girl, we're getting it done.

Yeah, yeah.

No, because I've been like, think I've been tell every time we get off the call, I'm like, I need to go to a call with you, Rachel, because I have like new alpha that I need to build a funnel for.

And I've been dancing around it because I know that too.

Like, sometimes just getting it done is the struggle.

But this accountability piece, game changer for me.

Rats.

I'm so excited.

We're gonna have to pull up this episode, I think in our schedule so that it's gonna be out and all.

You can hear what we just talked about.

But I'm very excited and slash proud of you.

And really I needed to go into next year with a kind of more structured and grounded approach.

I'm still on that very like, energetics of business right now.

And even you can tell today.

I'm sitting today because I've been editing our podcast.

I'm like, why can't I finish?

Like complete thoughts.

Why am I place?

I'm like, maybe I need to ground My energy down a little bit.

I had read that stand up when you do your podcast because it makes your voice sound brighter and more alive.

But it's like, I don't think I need to be brighter and more alive.

I need to ground it down out.

So I think that's a perfect segue of this kind of rules or business.

Things that were narratives that we're told to follow and trying it out and experimenting with it.

And the topic we're going to be talking about is Black Friday.

I haven't heard a lot of, like, rumblings around it yet.

It's coming up.

I hear some messaging of being like, we're priming Black Friday offers or get your audience ready.

And I'm sitting there just rolling my eyes.

Cause I'm like, okay, go ahead.

Yeah, yeah.

So, like, full disclosure, I have a little PTSD around Black Friday, because if you didn't know this, I worked in the re Clothing retail space for basically since I could work.

I got my first job at the Gap when I was 16.

I left retail when I was, what, 35.

So I spent, what, 20 years in retail, and I did 20 Black Friday.

And I think I even did it the first year that I left.

Like, I had officially quit Athleta, but it was still there.

Get my discount, because their discount is pretty sweet.

I did another one, and I think last year was the first time that I hadn't.

I was off on Black Friday, and my daughter wanted to go to the mall because we never get to go Black Friday shopping in London.

Good Black Friday.

So I'm going to bring a view from.

From a.

From working in Black Friday, like, boots on the ground.

Like, what we saw, what we learned, like, the different stages that Black Friday went.

And then I've also had clients that have done launches for Black Friday.

And then Rachel's going to bring her, like, marketing side of things, too, which she said something in her last episode.

I was like, you need to make.

A reel about that.

And it was like, do you.

You want.

It was like, do you have the energy or something like that to compete?

Like helping a client try to decide if this is for them?

Yeah, yeah.

That's always.

I always approach it from an energetic perspective because there's three things that I talk about with my clients.

I'm like, one, do you even want to discount anything that you have?

Is that something that is even a desire?

Or do we just feel like we're doing it because it needs to be enticing for this big, like, national promotion day?

Yeah, and then two is what is the energy that you have?

As we approach the year or the end of the year, a lot of people start to be like, I'm burned out, I'm drained, or I'm ready for the holidays.

And they don't really have this kind of like last push in them.

And I say honor because ultimately what you are doing is competing with the big box retailers and those retailers, like what you had said, like in your experience, the amount of effort that goes into one store's promotion and not even to mention the online space on top of that, you are literally competing with that.

And it's let the big guys have their day, whatever.

Be strategic in when you want to push this out.

Don't just do things because people on the Internet tell you to do things.

That's my biggest mantra for the year is like, I want.

Okay, so we're going to go deeper into each one of these because I want to go back home.

But which are third?

You said there's three things.

Oh, so discount energy and then competition.

So do you want a discount?

Do you have the energy and why do you want to be battling these competition people?

Yeah.

So I think let's dig into discounting and what that look like, what that looks like, and what I've seen that it can do to your business.

So from like this like retail perspective, guess what you want to watch to avoid.

I feel like with discounting is you don't want to be trait one if you're doing one on one.

My first thought about this is like, if you're doing one on one services, do not discount your time.

Do not discount it.

I think maybe a way around this if you want to do something.

If you ultimately go through these three questions and you decide it, like maybe there's a bonus or something that you can add in.

But I think discounting your time, it's not gonna be worth it.

But also it's like you do not want to train your customers to wait for a promotion.

Wait for a promotion.

And I will say this from, I feel like this is like public knowledge, but like you don't want to be a Banana Republic.

Like I worked for Gapping for years and Banana Republic went through some really, really hard times.

So there's like stores that you walk into.

Where were we the other day?

It's like Hobby Lobby where everything's like 40% off.

Now they just like market like it's like, what, this is not worth $50, but it's 50% off.

So it's only like 25, not 50 bucks.

Yeah, it's like because they've trained their customers to only shot when there's a discount and you do not want to do that with your customers as well.

So I guess I want to hear from your perspective, like I said, like you can offer bonuses.

Like, are there any other like tactics besides offering discounts that you've, you know, used in your clients launch strategies that's worked.

Yeah.

So for past like Black Friday campaigns, there's always two rules.

One, don't ever introduce a new offering during Black Friday.

And then two, don't discount something that's like, I guess what people wouldn't would consider like an active off.

Like you had said, like one on one calls or thing that actually take like your energy.

So things that are passive or maybe you're doing some type of hiring a program, something along those ends.

Like of course, like maybe then it's the right time.

But I still think like it deserves its own spot bought outside of the Black Friday shadows.

And so those are definitely like my two rules is never ever introduce new ones, new offerings and then always try to do as much passive as possible and never try to discount your own active time.

Because like you said, it is so hard to reverse the trained behavior of waiting for a discount.

Like for your clients to be like waiting for that discount because it's, it's in great.

That's why promotions and samples and freebies and things like that are so like good that people approach them more because like it's that law of reciprocity.

Right.

But I just don't, I don't think, I don't want to believe in discounting one on ones and like active time.

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

I think another like kind of good idea is like you can like bundle if you do have products like bundling so that they're like a shared value where they're like not discounting.

But my clients have seen the same success when it's bundling things together and that sort of thing.

I did have a client introduce a new offer, but this was something, it was a masterclass that she had done before.

And it did really, it did well.

But we don't have anything to bear against because that's the only time she's ever launched that offer.

So we don't know if we could have, if we would have done it at a later time.

But you also think about like where your customer is at that time.

Like your ideal customer are they.

If they're a mom and they're spending or their kids are out of school, they've just done Thanksgiving, they're going to be distracted and they're not going to be online much or they're going to be at the.

Is your ideal customer someone that Black Friday shop?

Because they're not going to be hearing you.

So I think it's just so much.

And like Rachel and I both, like, we don't really believe in cookie cutters and it's all about saying what's right for your business.

But like thinking about who your ideal client is, what they're going to be doing at that time.

Would this even be appealing for them?

I know for we're working in a retail space for Black Friday in particularly the people that are shopping in the mall on Black Friday, they're not Christmas shopping yet.

They are shopping.

So like the Christmas shopping doesn't really begin until maybe like the second week of December.

But most people that we would see in Black Friday are shopping for themselves or looking for a deal.

They're doing that thing.

There's very few of them, maybe like the kind of like boomer generation that are actually Christmas shopping, but most of like millennials and like the, the Gen Zers.

Are they Gen Zers, Gen Z, they are self shopping for.

So I think it's just all about thinking about your ideal customer and what they're going to be and is this offer going to be appealing to them at that time?

Yeah, totally.

I completely agree.

It's awareness into your ideal client and acknowledging are they.

I always tell my list or I tell my email subscribers this.

I'm like, you'll never catch me emailing you on a weekend because I know my ideal client is not sitting there reading through business emails on a week.

No.

So always understand the actual behaviors of your ideal client because that's gonna kind of make this decision more solidified to be like, do they have budget for this?

Or even if your product is something a little bit more like emotional or like serious, is this what they want to spend their money on right now?

Or do they want to buy something fun and light or whatever?

So just like really being honest about that is key to making this decision as informed as possible.

To skip Black Friday.

Yep, for sure.

I definitely agree.

All right, so energy availability and like we said, I'll tell you from a what's in the ground perspective.

We start planning.

Black corporate probably starts planning Black Friday like the day after Black Friday the year prior.

But in stores we would act well actively start like our ramp up and planning in August.

So like from August to November we are hiring and we are resetting the stores and we are training and we are looking at our forecast from last year and making sure that we have the right amount of people.

So it's.

There is so much energy and so much pressure that these big corporations and money that these big corporations put behind this and I'm sure even like ad spend probably is crazy and trying to even get your, the amount of money you'd have to spend to get your ads hit during that time is probably crazy.

So I just think from that's the energy and the bigger life, like, like intense crazy training.

I like as much as I say ptsd, I like, I love it because I love like planning like it was like planning a giant launch every year and like making sure and like the day when you get to see it like finally like orchestrate together was just really fun for me when you see it come to life.

But yeah.

So I feel like do you have that amount like exactly what you said, do you have that amount of energy to compete against that kind of thing?

Yeah.

And I think it goes back to our conversation of capacity but also acknowledging that when these bigger businesses are telling you let me teach you my or not big businesses.

Because I want to make sure we're like talking about Black Friday in a way that online marketers and then retailers.

So when these online retailers are like steal my Black Friday promotion plan and my this one got me a hundred thousand dollars.

And that when you're buying this, you're acknowledging like the big retailers, they have a whole campaign team, a bunch of project managers, they're doing ad spend, market research, all of these things to then reach that space of $100,000 or whatever from their like sale.

And so making sure that you're not like feeling the FOMO of everybody else is going to do it and actually like honoring this is a rest period for me and really respecting that part of your like seasonal business because it's so easy to get caught up and be like, oh, I should do this.

And I don't know if we should get caught up in the shoulds of business instead of actually and we should actually acknowledge how does this feel?

Do I even want to do this.

Instead of.

It's remembering why for me, it's remembering why I even started this in the first place.

Like I.

One of the main drivers from starting my business was I had worked in the retail space all my life and I had, you know, there were points where Black Friday started on Thanksgiving.

Like now Black Friday and I would have to go Thanksgiving and now Black Friday starts like the beginning of November and stuff like that.

But it's like I had missed so many of like my kids are out that week of Black Friday.

Like I intentionally started this business to be able to give them my attention when they're out of school.

So it's.

I do not want to, you know, sign up for that.

And when a client, when a client comes to me and is like, I want to do a Black Friday sale, I'm not going to say now because that's what they want to do with.

They want to.

But there is a very intentional plan about we're going to have all of this wrapped up before this week because during the holiday we're not going to have to do that.

You know, I've launched with my clients.

They finished, you know, their launch plan and everything's set up and ready to go and automated to go off.

And we're just checking in on it a little bit at a time.

It's like they had the team to support that everything was gonna get finished and they weren't Thanksgiving night writing emails to go out.

I'm an international audience.

Maybe it's still.

But still you're going up against so much big energy that day.

That's probably just a time to lock it off and don't worry about it.

Yeah.

And I think it's real to acknowledge the fact if you do have a promotional sale on Black Friday and maybe let's say you make 400, $500 if it's low ticket, like we can acknowledge that like sure, that's beautiful that you made that right.

It's hard as a business owner to turn away opportunities to make money.

But I think making sure that you're not costing yourself non monetary damages through like burnout and wasted your own personal hours.

Because if you're calculating how much time it takes you to build this promotional campaign out, like set it up and launch it and like maybe have your VA help, is it equal or less than the $500 you might actually be returning on that like time money.

So I think that's also like it's real to be like I made 500 last year.

But it's like.

But how much energy and like of your own time, like if you had to bill your own hours to yourself, would it actually be profitable?

I think is something to also acknowledge.

Yeah, for sure.

Where that's where it comes back to project planning and putting out your time so that you know how much you're actually spending on this, whether it be your time or money.

Yeah.

All right.

And then our third point is competition, which we already talked about a lot about the different businesses.

Do you have anything else to add about competition?

I just think I like really want to reiterate like there is no need to be taking your business baby business and maybe your big business or whatever.

Like however the energy feels in your business.

And pitted against someone that is like 10,000 employees, million dollar budgets.

Like to me from an intentionality standpoint, I see that and I go pick my battle.

That's not my battle I want to be fighting in.

And I think it's really important to acknowledge just that like the time and energy and budgets that go into these big retail, big online business campaigns is real.

And it's no amount of FOMO or project planning can like make the energies exchange worth it.

So I don't know.

That could sound very negative and I'm sure it's might not be received by a lot of people.

But I think for the people who would listen to our podcast and to the people who are in our audience, like it's almost like permissions, like please do not feel pressured to do it.

And if you are looking to sit back and be like I don't want to, this is your permission slip to be like, you don't have to.

Yeah, because I feel like the pressure is about to get heated.

You're about to hear it from all sorts of people about I did this launch or you need some launch or don't leave in money on the table.

And it's like sometimes it's okay.

Remember like what are else you're leaving on the table if you're gonna pick out that money.

So like make your decision and like just be strong with it.

Cause there's always gonna be another opportunity.

I don't wanna be like, just don't do it.

Okay.

So if someone decides this is not for them, do you have any other.

I guess what are some ways or Q4 we're just shutting it down and we're like knock outcomes competing against anything or is like their other promotional campaign ideas that you.

So there's so much as there's so much nuance in that question.

So I say alternatives to Black Friday.

Let's say do a Q1 plan or have the past 3 quarters and look back and see like actual, some like actual data that's going to make more money for you in the upcoming year.

Traditionally I see a lot of businesses especially like investments in marketing and investments in non fun things slow down significantly in November and December.

So really not forcing yourself into the opportunity to have disappointment if your promotion doesn't go well.

So I would say do some planning as an alternative cuz that's going to make you more money in the next year.

Do some market insights.

See when your audience like what are the seasons of purchasing in your actual business?

And then I don't know what the last one could be but ultimately just don't even stress about it.

Yeah, I think it's, yeah, I think it's like look at your data.

Because I'll counter that being like last year I think I saw someone post about this like don't do anything for Q4.

Look at your data, look at your insight.

Look at my data.

I looked at my insights and I signed a client in November, client in December and a client in January.

And they were with me very, very long time.

My data insights, they're coming now.

They weren't ready to start getting rolling until January, but they were thinking about next year and the shifts that they need to needed to make.

I also know what I did last year is that in September I emailed all my clients and asked them for referrals.

So it took about November for all those people to start early then.

So I think it's just about knowing, knowing your audience and checking in with your own data and insights and not letting outside influences and arbitrary rules, narratives that we hear in the Internet get to you.

Stay strong, stay grounded and stay centered.

Yes to all of that.

All right, so I think we're gonna wrap it up there.

We're rooting.