I’ve noticed this happens often when I set expectations too high for myself. When I really want something to happen. I set the expectations so high that I have no idea how to reach them so when it comes to doing the things to get to that goal, I just don’t start.

So let’s take this Black Friday for instance.

The last couple of years I’ve half-heartedly put a blanket sale on my products, usually just to join in with the rest of the world selling things. I’ve only made a few sales but it never really mattered because my main income came from my job.

This year things are different. I have some good quality products to sell and I’m now full-time indie / freelance. So there is self-inflicted pressure on me to make this Black Friday a success.

I’ve seen so many others have huge paydays when they do BF right and I want in on the action. I know it has potential it has to work.

So what are my expectations?

I have 3 products to sell so I’ve broken them down.

  • For my course, I’d like to beat day 1 sales ($136). Achievable, yes?
  • For my wallet business, I want to beat the entire year (£360). Maybe a bit more unattainable?
  • Then for the membership, I’m happy to just sell 1 or 2 (£50).

In my head I wanted to have a nice payday that would set me up nicely for December. But even these goals won’t get me there.

Okay, so I’ve just uncovered another problem. My goals won’t get me to my actual goal, which in my head is around $1,000.

Why $1,000? Will cover a week or two of expenses, extending my runway by ahem a week or two.

The paralysis

I only really started thinking about BF a week ago, so there hasn’t been a huge deal of planning like many others would do. It may be a little more thought out in terms of the deal mechanics, but not so much how I’d get people to know about and buy the deal.

Then my only real channel I’ve started to see work over the past few months is Twitter. And for that I’ve already sold my course, my wallets and my membership to over and over again. I suspect most that want to buy already have done.

So that’s where the paralysis or inaction comes in. I only have one channel and I don’t know how it’s going to work. So I’m trying to think of other channels to try out, but I’m not sure where to even start with it. These are things that I should have been building months and months ago.

  • Email list
  • SEO
  • Instagram
  • TikTok

All of the above, if I had started months ago, would have given me a much better shot at hitting my expectations this BF.

So what should I do?

I still don’t know! I’m sort of flapping around trying to think of some miracle that will find a channel other than Twitter that will fire traffic into all of my sites to get the BF payday. We’ll see.