Birthday Flash Sale Debrief: £3k in 48 Hours (And What I'd Do Differently)
What's this episode of the lionhearted ceo podcast about?
Fancy a behind-the-scenes peek at my recent birthday flash sale? Pop the kettle on and settle in, because I'm sharing all the juicy details of how I generated over £3000 in just 48 hours - without adding an additional work to my (already quite full!) plate!
In this episode, we'll cover:
My year-long journey to creating a truly scalable offer (spoiler: it wasn't all smooth sailing!)
The intentional strategy behind my Audience Builder course structure
How I promoted the sale without relying on ads (and why my Sunday Instagram post was a bit of a flop)
Four things I'd tweak for next time (because there's always room for improvement, right?)
Whether you're curious about running your own flash sale or just fancy a nosy into how another business owner does things, this episode is full of practical tips and honest reflections.
So, ready for a cozy catch-up and some business insights? Let's dive in!
P.S. I promise not to bang on about my birthday too much... but there might be mention of cake!
Hi! I’m your host Sophie Griffiths, a Meta ads expert and business growth strategist.
The LionHearted CEO podcast is designed for impatiently ambitious women who are ready to scale and often juggling motherhood alongside their thriving online businesses in coaching, course creation, or service-based business.
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Read the transcript:
NOTE: This podcast was transcribed by an AI tool. Please forgive any typos or errors.
[00:00:00] Hello and a big welcome to Lionhearted CEO, the podcast for unapologetically, impatiently ambitious women who know they want to stop being the bottleneck in their business and become the Lionhearted CEO they know they are meant to be. I'm Sophie Griffiths, a tea enthusiast, marketing and Metis ad specialist and firm believer.
The chocolate should never be kept in the fridge. Join me every Tuesday and Thursday for bold, imperfect, fun approach to marketing and scaling your business without burning out every few months. We'll dive into practical strategies and have inspirational conversations that will support you to create a thriving, sustainable business that brings you joy as well as financial freedom.
Okay, let's jump in.
Hello and welcome to this week's episode. So today I wanted to give you a little bit of a behind the scenes of the flash sale. I ran last week for my birthday, in fact. So it was a 48 hour flash sale of my audience builder [00:01:00] course.
Now it was the first time I've run a sale on this course. In fact, it's probably the first time I've run a sale in my entire business. So I thought it would be really helpful to go a little bit behind the scenes and give you an insight into the kind of work I've had to do to get to this place where I've got an offer. If I can put a sale on and doesn't increase my work late. How I generated over 3000 pounds in 48 hours to top up my August income, which means I can drop down to three days a week and not onboard any new clients. And also what I do differently next time as well, because there are always things that I learn when I do these things.
And I'm got so many thoughts and ideas but when I do the next offer. So let's start with how exactly how I got to the point where I've got an offer that allows me to add as many people as I want in, without increasing my workload. It's actually taken me probably a whole year to get to this point, I have tried a lot of different ways to scale my business. From a more longterm higher ticket group programs to two week sprints to [00:02:00] intensives with me, I've done lots and lots of different ways, and it's taken me a while to work out what a truly scalable offer is for me anyway, and how I can integrate that into the business and give people the result they want without having to increase my workload.
When I increase the amount of people in it now, not all of my offers are truly scalable offers. But this time, last year, I realized that it was a real gap in my office suite, the every way of accessing, like my knowledge and expertise involved working with me one-to-one and as great as that sounds, it meant that I was massively limiting my capacity. My ability to serve my clients and my ability to give people the information they need to learn how to run ads. So they all started really last summer when I was planning August, I knew I wanted to go down to three days a week.
I knew I didn't want to onboard any one-to-one clients. And so I was thinking about how I could generate some revenue just to tide me through August. So it didn't completely or drop off a cliff. And I came up with the idea of these fearless funnel focus sessions. I love alliteration. And [00:03:00] it was basically two one-to-one sessions with me where we would go through your funnel we would map it all together and give you a plan to move forward. So it was a really way off. I think it was about 350 pounds. I was really, really excited about it. I launched at the end of July. So a similar kind of time
I think I had five people jump into that offer. I think it was just over 1500 pounds of revenue, which was exactly the kind of revenue I was looking for to cover August now, whilst the actual offer was great. I love running it with the clients. There were some fundamental issues to it already. Already probably spotted. It was a one-to-one offer. I actively didn't want to do something like a group course. I love, love hosting communities, but I find holding them quite energetically draining.
So it wasn't something I wanted to do over August feeling like I was constantly checking in and, responding to everybody. So I decided I didn't want to do a group. So it was intentionally one-to-one. However I also didn't want to be on zoom. I was dropping down to three days a week.
So planning 10 sessions over August was quite a challenge. And actually what I found the flip side of that was the [00:04:00] clients didn't really want the sessions in August as well. Now I could have had stronger boundaries and said, no, you absolutely have to have both sessions in August.
That's the deal. However, it kind of worked for me that they didn't want them to have both sessions in August. So we had some sessions in August. But some fashions continued into September and I think a couple even went into October. Now this then impacted my capacity and availability in September and October, especially going into Q4 is a really, really busy period for ads.
This sort of quick easy offer that I'd done in August was actually giving me a bit of a headache in September and October. So it just wasn't scalable.
And overall I was like, right, we're definitely not doing that next year. I really need to have an offer. I can bring people into that really helps them. That gets them a really great result, but doesn't require me to have additional time on zoom. And it doesn't sort of drag into September, October time when I've actually got to be focusing on my management consultancy clients ads. So. I pondered, what exactly would this scalable offer look [00:05:00] like? And came up in November, decided to start creating the audience builder course.
So this is my Facebook ads course that helps you grow your audience on social media and your email list as well. So November, I launched it with a black Friday founding offer. Actually created the course in January and it started in early fab.
So I created this course. I launched it. , I had just over 40 people when I launched it, which was absolutely thrilled
The court gets incredible results all the time., one of the amazing clients was running ads already. She was getting them. I think it was about three pounds, 50 a lead at the time. Holly's in health 35 piece. So it's worked absolute wonders. So I was so thrilled and. It really allowed me to feel really, really confident to sell this course without the additional support, which was something really new for me.
I had before had always felt like, and as many a coach has pointed out to me is my ego speaking, but it really felt like people needed to work with me. One-to-one to be able to get the results. And actually this really showed me that actually it's my knowledge and experience not actually [00:06:00] physically me necessarily that will allow you to get the results.
So just to give you some context of pricing. So how much am I selling the course for? cause I think that really makes a difference if I'm selling something for 27 pounds and I've sold 40, that's quite different than if you're selling something for 9 97 and you've sold 40.
So this is the pricing structure at the moment
It's 197 pounds plus VAT for the basic access, just to the course. Then it's 297 pounds plus VAT for the access to the course and then access to fortnightly group coaching calls.
So that's four calls over four months. There's an additional add-on for a lone hearted lead gen toolkit, which is 57 pounds. And that's things like that are going to allow you to really improve your ads. So a really co-present module on creating a lead magnet is going to appeal to your audience when you're running ads. Welcome sequence and then using AI to get really great copy. There's also an offer, which is the course plus them one month support for me and my team to get the ads up and running.
And that's 9, 9, 7. So there's kind of [00:07:00] three core offers there, then there's the add on
and since the initial launch in February, I've had ads running, there is a funnel. There are emails. And when people come into my world, I tell them about the audience builder calls. I am. I probably get, I would say probably one sale a week at the moment.
So I probably get three or four core sales a month. Which more than covers my ad spend. That was my fundamental approach. Is that. I want to make sure that the core sales cover my ad spend because I'm also growing my audience with a lot more people who come into different offers as well.
So it's all been working really nicely. I haven't had to spend hardly any time on it. I have the fortnightly group coaching calls in my diary. And they're an hour there in my diary. People come, if they want to use the call and left, don't come. If they don't. So it's really low maintenance. There's no community, there's no questions afterwards.
Which for me is really. For me, that's exactly what I wanted. Now coming full circle back into this August conundrum, it was getting to mid-July. I was thinking, right. I really want to drop down again to three days a week. I want to reduce the amount of time I'm spending on zoom this [00:08:00] August. And I don't want onboard any one-to-one clients.
So how can I generate some revenue? So now, instead of thinking, oh, I'm going to have to create an offer. I'm going to have to educate my audience on the offer. I'm going to have to then sell the offer quite heavily. I was like, well, I've got my course. So I have the audience builder calls. Most of my audience know exactly what it is because they've either been in my world long enough to know, or they've come through my welcome sequence.
They've seen content. I don't promote it heavily on my organic social media. It genuinely tends to sell itself in the background.
But people tend to know what it is, which really, really helps. So it's not something like I had to launch a new thing because that's really challenging if you're launching a new thing, there's any 48 hours. not only you talking to people about the offer, but you're trying to educate them on the outcome, what it is, et cetera.
So that was a massive positive for me in the flash sale. I didn't have to create a sales page. I didn't have to. Check the messaging. I didn't have to worry about whether, you know, people were going to understand the offer. I'd already done all that verification, which was brilliant. So this was the plan. [00:09:00] So my birthday is the 28th of July, which was a Sunday.
So ran the sale on the Sunday and the Monday. So it was a 48 hour sale. And the offer was that you could get the course. Plus the group coaching calls and the toolkit. For the same price as just the course. So not 1 9, 7. And that's the saving of 157 pounds. Now I already run the group coaching calls every other week.
So more people can just join those. That's absolutely fine. And everything else is there and ready to use. It's all set up and Thrivecart people get access as soon as they buy. So there was literally no additional work for me other than setting up the sale.
And I think that's what contributes to a feeling so light and fun and really, truly scalable because actually the infrastructure is already there.
And it just feels like I can just sell as many as I want, or as few as I want, there really doesn't matter. Like how many I actually sell. Because it's not going to impact me directly.
So let's move into why actually dead. I didn't want ads for the sale. Now that might surprise you because you might think, well, why on earth would you not run ads? You know, that's your thing. But actually it was [00:10:00] only 48 hours. I run ads through the air. So I knew there were people in my audience.
Who'd be interested if I ran a longer sale. Yes. I might look at doing some ads. Probably just re-targeting ads to people that already know. Who I am. So are people already in my world? Just to make sure they actually see it. The only problem with 48 hours is, you know, trying to make sure that your audience actually see it even where then I'll walk you through exactly what I did to let people know, even with all of that, there will be.
There will still be a proportion of your audience that just don't see it. And especially at this time of year as well, because people are on holiday. People are distracted. You know, with their kids, they're away for weekends. You know, there's a lot more going on.
So it's possible that people aren't going to see it, so I could potentially use ads for that, but I didn't this time. I just knew that running ads all year round meant that there was an audience there who were ready to buy. Next thing I did was prime at my social media and my email list.
So I let them know that the sale was coming so on the Thursday and Friday, I sent two emails. , did quite a few Instagram stories just to prime people that it was coming. Then I [00:11:00] scheduled two emails for Sunday and two emails for Monday for the actual sale days.
And those emails covered things like launching the offer, water included, social proof, common questions that people have about it. And those emails did really well. I definitely saw after I sent each of those four emails, there was a flurry of people, the board.
I also scheduled a grid posts for Sunday and Monday. Now the Sunday grid post didn't get a huge amount of engagement.
It really struggled. And I think. It was, it was just unfortunate that my birthday landed on a Sunday. I could have done the sale on the Monday and Tuesday and just had it as a birthday sale. It kind of made sense to me to do it on the Sunday and the Monday when it was actually my birthday. However I do find that my organic posts generally get a lot less engagement on the weekends.
So that was a bit challenging. I'll talk about this in a minute, but I probably would choose my days a little bit more wisely next time. And then finally, I might have affiliates who sell my course to their audience and they get percentage of each sale.
So I sent an email to my affiliates. I also [00:12:00] drafted them an email to send to their audience and it also did them in Instagram story template they could use for Instagram to help them sell. The course because they get percentage of each so I wanted to make it as easy as possible for them to sell the course. So now the results. So from the two days. I got 16 sales. Two of those were from affiliates. And the total revenue generated excluding VAT was 3,152 pounds.
So absolutely what I needed to more than cover August for the slight dip in not taking on any one-to-one clients and dropping down to three days a week.
I was really happy with the results. My aim was 10 thought. If I could sell 10 and generate just under 2000 pounds, that would be really great. 15 was my like stretch number.
So to hit 16, I was absolutely thrilled. Well, all they be doing as well as tracking the lifetime value of the clients as well. To clients that do audience builder calls, there's quite a few of them that will then go into work with me and other offers as well.
So the overall lifetime value of this sale will go up over time and they will be tracking [00:13:00] that. And that's something that I think is always really interesting as well. You've got your absolute revenue numbers, but as soon as you get someone into your world and they've actually bought from you at the opportunity then for further, you know, working together and revenue is obviously increased. So those were the results.
And then finally, I just want to share the four things I would do differently next time. The first thing is I would set a wait list up and I would start priming the sale a lot earlier on Because of the podcast we launched, we had done a huge amount of emails. And focus on the podcast so I didn't want to just go from podcast launch straight into this.
So , I gave my list a little bit of a break. I also am selling my mastermind day. I in September and my mastermind as well. So there is a lot going on at the moment in my world and next time, I would probably make sure I'm in like a slightly clear repaired where I can just talk about this one thing really consistently.
And I would probably have an additional bonus to incentivize people to get on the wait list. I would also let my affiliates know earlier so they could plan having affiliates is a brand new thing to me. I've never had affiliates before.
It's something I'm kind of [00:14:00] learning as I go. It's been incredibly impactful for my business.
Having other people sell the course is incredible, but it is something I'm kind of getting used to in terms of mapping in that for them.
I'd also probably ask them what they would find helpful for me to create. I did the email on the Instagram story template. I don't know if that was the most useful thing for them. So I think I would be really looking to engage the affiliates more early on. I'd use LinkedIn as well as Instagram. Ah, because I actually just did Instagram this time because I have my incredible social media manager, Nao.
We do a lot of the content together, but she does all the logistics and all the graphics and everything. I do LinkedIn at which means it is a lot more sporadic and a lot less planned. So I would absolutely plan for LinkedIn next time.
I'd also plan in more grid posts in the run-up to the sale as well, and I'm not just relying on the poster garden, those two days, if one of them gets really low reach, then I'm not like, oh, that's so annoying because I know that there's like the buildup has been there. And then finally I'd use the podcast more.
So the sale fell between the podcast episodes. [00:15:00] So I release episodes on a Tuesday and a Thursday, and the sale ran on a Sunday and a Monday. So I didn't prime my audience in the week before, which I absolutely could've done. I could have mentioned it in the podcast. That would have been a good idea.
It just didn't go into the plant at the time. So I would definitely be doing that. And I would probably, again, linking back to what I said earlier. Think about the days I was going to run the sale next time, maybe not quite so linked to just a random day, like my birthday. But it would be incredibly helpful.
You know, if I run it from a Tuesday to a Thursday, maybe because I've got two podcast episodes that could go out. Cause people tend to listen to the podcast episodes on the day they come out. That's when I get the most downloads. So it would be really great if someone's listening and I could say, the flash sale is on now. That would be really helpful.
it's just those sort of things I think could make a really small difference. Would I run ads? I don't know that. I don't think that's on my definitely for next time plan. But it's something I would potentially consider depends on the time of year. The next obvious one is black Friday.
I don't know if I'll [00:16:00] do black Friday. So whilst yes, people are buying. I also find those just it's incredibly competitive and people are really thinking about like what they want to spend their money on.
It might be that I wait for a period that actually just makes more sense to me. A bit like with my birthday, it just felt really natural and aligned with the business to do it when it was my birthday.
I really hope that was useful. I hope it's given you a little bit of inspiration, not just about running a flash sale for your business, but also the kind of things that you need to Have in place to run a sale to, to an offer that is truly scalable.
Thank you so much for listening and I will speak to you next time.
Thank you so much for listening today. Before you go, if this episode struck record with you, I'd be over the moon. If you could take a moment to rate, subscribe, and leave a review, your words not only brighten up my day, but they are also the magic that helps others discover this lion hearted community.
Again, thank you so much and I will see you next week.
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