How Starter Story Uses Urgency For Limited-Time Black Friday Sale

Pat Walls, the founder of Starter Story, recently launched a 24-hour Black Friday sale with a unique twist. Instead of a traditional marketing campaign, Pat created an exclusive video aimed at his loyal audience, offering them a once-in-a-lifetime deal.

The video was designed to be taken down within 24 hours, creating a sense of urgency and exclusivity.

Someone sneakily archived the video on Web Archive.

The Offer: Lifetime Access at an Unbeatable Price

Pat Walls’ offer is simple yet powerful: lifetime access to Starter Story for less than the cost of a single year’s subscription.

The lifetime deal included:

• Case Studies: 4000+ real-world success stories from entrepreneurs.

• Business Ideas: A database of over 2,500 business ideas tailored for aspiring founders.

• Courses: Access to educational content like the Lean SEO course, which generated $25K in sales shortly after launch.

• The Academy: A framework Pat personally used to build a million-dollar business while working part-time.

Pat emphasized the value of this deal by comparing it to past offerings, stating, “You can get everything for life for less than we usually charge for one year of Starter Story access.”

Scarcity in Action: The 24-Hour Deadline

Pat strategically used psychological triggers to drive immediate action:

1. Time-Limited Video: The announcement video was set to be deleted within 24 hours, reinforcing urgency. Pat stated, “I’m taking this video down tomorrow.”

2. Exclusivity for Loyal Fans: The video was targeted at “OG Starter Story fans” creating a sense of community and loyal fans were given first dibs on the deal before it went public later in the week.

3. Past Scarcity Proof: Pat reminded viewers that last year’s deal sold out in just 2 hours, adding credibility to the time-sensitive nature of the offer.

4. Value Anchoring: Pat positioned the lifetime deal as a significant discount, making it appear incredibly attractive. He emphasized potential savings, stating "You're going to save thousands of dollars and get lifetime access."

The deal was taken off market after 24-hours.

The "24-hour Delete Video" playbook by Starter Story is heavily inspired by Colin & Samir's 24-hour Giveaways.

Colin & Samir generated 8000 subscribers in just 1 day through a similar video. They do videos like this all the time with different titles like "For Subscribers Only" and "Deleting this video today."

And they actually work on hardcore fans.

You can use variations of this in your marketing strategy when you have enough influence to drive urgency. It is one of the best ways to discover your 1000 true fans.

Top Tweets of the day

1/

ChatGPT advanced voice mode is the way of the future.

The real breakthrough here isn't just AI teaching - it's personalized engagement at scale.

Traditional education faces 2 major limits: teacher availability and customization. Voice AI removes both.

Kids learn better through play and conversation, not lectures.

2/

Grok-2 has access to X, the OG source for everything else, since X is low-effort and real-time.

The problem with Grok-2 is its just not good compared to the other State of the Art (SOTA) models.

I had a hard time prompting it. Hopefully, Musk fixes this in 2025 with Grok-3 as they have ordered 100,000 H100s to train Grok-3 on.

3/

Soon, most of the alpha will be in DMs.

But there will be a few who want fame more than gatekeeping the alpha for their next ventures so the alpha will still be there if you can look for it.

It will all be gated in private communities though. Someone who gives away actual alpha will have an easy time building an audience that they can later monetize.

Rabbit Holes

1. The 6-Minute Guide to Generating Top-Quality Newsletter Subscribers (with Paid Ads) by Gunnar Holm

2. Side Project Marketing Will Change Your Game by Viral Loops

3. Basic Media Buying On Facebook Ads Is Dead. (Lessons After Spending $10M+ In Facebook Ads In 2024) by /r/marketing

So, what's the verdict on today's literary gem? Smash that 'reply' button and spill the beans—don't worry, I'm tough enough to handle your feedback (I hope). 😜

New here? Join the squad.

Oh, and if you thought tweeting was dead, think again! I'm keeping the tradition alive on X

More Startup Spells 🪄

1. How Cody Ko Took I'd Cap That App To 4 Million Users In 4 Months (LINK)

2. TikTok's Viral Secrets (LINK)

3. Unsplash's Growth Strategy (LINK)