Black Friday Fatigue

Don't feel bad about not offering discounts during Black Friday. I don't.

So, how’d Black Friday go? Did you discount your services? Feel weird about it? Or maybe you sat it out entirely and watched everyone else race to the bottom while feeling guilty you weren’t “participating”?

While everyone’s still hungover from their Black Friday discounts, I want to talk about why Small Business Saturday shouldn’t mean ‘small prices’ for your expertise.

Every year, when Black Friday rolls around a lot of people in the design industry put some of their most popular services and products on sale.

They usually do one of two things to put things in motion. 1: they start planning months in advance trying to figure out their sales funnel, marketing tactics, pricing structure and, content or 2: they realize on the Monday of Thanksgiving week that they haven’t planned anything and try to quickly put something together to try to make some sells quickly.

In the past, I’ve always been the latter type of business owner, but I truly appreciate the people that take their sales seriously, and try to plan for a successful launch. Look, if you already ran a Black Friday sale yesterday, I’m not here to shame you. But now that it’s done, let’s talk about how to position yourself so you never feel like you HAVE to discount again.

Over the years, I’ve done Black Friday sales less and less. Not because I don’t like the rush of seeing a bunch of sales come through, but mostly because it’s a lot of work for something that probably shouldn’t be on sale anyway.

I’m a true believer in pricing my services according to the work I put into it and the value that my clients will obtain after using it. And year after year, the rush fades and there’s a sort of disappointment in offering something you valued so highly at a discount.

Last week, one of my consulting clients asked me if she should offer a discount for her brand-new service she’s launching. I immediately told her no. I don’t think everything needs to be offered for “sale” on Black Friday, especially for small business owners who need to make ends meet by selling their services.

When you discount your strategic services, you’re not just cutting price - you’re training clients to see your expertise as a commodity. And once they see you as the ‘discount designer,’ good luck ever charging premium rates again.

Would you rather sell a service for $1,000 and offer your best work, or 5 services at $500 and have to do the same amount of work at half the cost and double the time? I think, for service providers, Black Friday makes our work load 10 times heavier for half the payout and a longer timeline to boot.

Instead of discounting your services during the holidays, I think you should just sell more. And today, Small Business Saturday, is the perfect day to start. Talk about your services as much as you can, remind people that they can sign up for your newsletter to receive updates on your brand, release new content that talks about the process and client success stories, and just show up.

Today is supposedly about supporting small businesses. But somehow that’s been twisted into expecting small businesses to offer big corporate-style discounts we can’t actually afford. We’re not Target. We’re not Amazon. We’re experts who pour our whole selves into transforming our clients’ businesses.

I’ve realized a lot of service-based business owners think that Black Friday is their time to make a lot of sales by offering insane discounts, but really, this is a great time to optimize the Black Friday fatigue most people are having and not sell your services at a discount.

Here are a couple of things you could start TODAY (yes, on Small Business Saturday) instead of giving people a discount:

1. Remind your audience what you do. You’d be surprised how many people forget what you offer online. So use this time to reintroduce yourself.

2. Add a holiday segment to your content plan for December. For example, this might look like photographers showing their audience their top 5 local spots they like to shoot during the holidays. Or copywriters breaking down their top 5 holiday ads from the early 2000s and why they work well.

3. Create a newsletter on ways your clients can audit their brand before the new year.

4. Put together a blog post going over your top 5 projects from 2025 while everyone’s in a reflective mood.

5. Create a passion project for one of your dream clients, document the entire process, and upload it online before the new year.

These are only a few ideas I have on ways you can spend Small Business Saturday and the rest of the holidays promoting your business without having to discount your services. Have any other ideas on ways you can promote your business? Leave a comment and tell me what you’re thinking.

While everyone else is recovering from their discount hangover, you could be the business that shows up this weekend and says, “My small business charges what it’s worth. And that’s exactly why you should hire me.”

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I’m not offering any discounts on my services this year, but I am promoting my business. So here are a couple of ways you can work with me:

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