#53 Arnas Jacevičius – $10M+ From Black Friday and Balancing Mental Health With High-Performance eCommerce Marketing

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This podcast deals with 2 main topics:

Arnas leaving Sugatan agency, lessons learned, mental health, and balancing high-performance eCommerce media buying with personal development.
Practical lessons on Facebook ads, media buying strategies, and insights from generating $10M in November for one client working in eCommerce.

If you want to listen to the latter, skip ahead to 35:00 into the podcast.

And if you want to listen to the whole thing (highly recommended), get ready to take notes if you want to learn how to generate at least 50% more revenue for the next Black Friday and gain a new perspective on mental health and personal development.

First things first – why IS Arnas leaving Sugatan?

It’s been a crazy journey, Arnas recalls his days of working in an internship in Barcelona – making around €250 a month. Now, 2 years later, they’re recording a podcast on generating millions.

It just felt like the right move to grow, he says.

We just wanted to grow the businesses as much as possible, and somewhere along the way, we lost the part of focusing on ourselves, explains Arnas.

And that’s the price you pay for the quick growth.

Now, he’s realizing fixing your head and your mind opens up new perspectives.

With that said, it’s still possible to manage high-performance work and life at the same time.

Then, they continue exchanging stories and perspectives on mental health and therapy – telling stories of burnout, dreaming big, and Arnas shares his experience with going to a psychologist.

Walking away from something you’ve been building for almost 2 years might seem hard on paper. But Arnas says bigger projects may come in the future or that he may crave them again at some point.

It’s important you don’t lose sight of the importance of self-care and your bigger goals.

Another important thing you need to identify managing an agency is the difference between superstars and rockstars:

When you want to grow, you need superstars – the ones who want to climb the positions and learn new skills.
Rockstars do an amazing job at what they do and don’t want to go somewhere else.

Some people might want to stay where they are. While others are hungry and crave the failure to learn things.

After a deep and personal talk on mental health and past experiences, Deividas and Arnas move onto discussing Black Friday and eCommerce marketing.

The client Arnas was working with made almost $50M this year and the first thing Deividas wants to know – What did they do differently?

One of the main things was that their offer was simple.

They had a side-wide 50% off discount VIP sale for the most popular products.
After the VIP sale, they had up to 30%-50% discount depending on the product.
On Black Friday and the weekends, it was 50% off again on selected items.

The next thing they discuss is the Facebook ads strategy.

Arnas says they started identifying patterns behind the creatives. After talking with a Facebook rep, Arnas found that Facebook stores data not only on the campaign level, ad-set level, or ad level. But also on the visual level.

Before Black Friday, they tested out the concepts and creatives. So, during Black Friday, they knew what visuals would perform well. And by having a lot of variety of creatives (images, GIFs, collages, etc.), they wouldn’t be limiting themselves with the creatives.

After seeing what worked best, they focused on creatives that worked best during VIP sales.

This way, going into Black Friday, they already knew what would be working best.

If you find an ad that’s working from your first day of Black Friday promotion and your Black Friday ends in 1 week, you’ll want to have that ad running and scaling.

But if you change your offer (e.g. different offers before and after Black Friday), you’ll want to turn off that ad that’s already optimized and out of the learning phase.

If you turn on the ads that have 0 learning on Black Friday, it could take up to 3-8 hours to get out of the learning phase – essentially wasting your time and potential sales.

For the next Black Friday, Deividas also recommends having multiple campaigns starting at different times.

In general, Arnas recommends testing and identifying the winning offer for the next Black Friday Cyber Monday, experimenting with creatives, and whitelisting influencer accounts.

Last question – If someone was coming to join Sugatan, what is the message Arnas would give them?

Arnas says he had the greatest time at Sugatan and it changed his life (as cheesy as it might sound). It’s been an amazing opportunity and an experience he’ll forever be grateful for.

Don’t be scared to dream big. And when you think that you’ve dreamed big enough, be sure to triple it at least.

Here’s what we cover during episode #53:

Why Deividas is doing this podcast to solve his own issues and why he was expecting to generate $20M+ instead of $17M-$18M
Massive Black Friday eCommerce checklist playbook Deividas is (not so secretly) working on
Why Arnas is leaving Sugatan, stories of burnout, and advancing through different levels
The price you pay for quick growth
What Deividas says Arnas missed out on joining Sugatan almost immediately after college
Self-care and managing work at the same time
Why mental health is so prevalent in the industry according to Arnas and why people think that “the only thing that matters is the numbers”
When you can’t shake the feeling of being stuck when you have a great job, friends, and money
Setting up too big goals for yourself and dreaming big
Arnas’ experience with a psychiatrist
Making the decision to walk away from something you’ve been building for 2 years
The difference between superstars and rockstars when your agency is growing quickly
Looking back to when Arnas got hired in Sugatan and how Arnas was always dreaming big
Arnas’ first job cleaning toilets
Moving onto discussing Black Friday and eCommerce marketing
Facebook ads strategy and reiterating creatives
What Arnas found out after speaking with a Facebook rep
Why you should already start thinking about Black Friday in November (if not earlier) and what steps you should take to start testing offers and creatives in advance
Lessons learned on scaling ads and changing offers
How to be prepared for the next Black Friday with ads and creatives that already have data on the customers
Spending $1M in a day on Black Friday ads
Focusing on projections and knowing what to expect out of Black Friday
Quick golden nugget on simple influencer marketing tactics involving user-generated content that worked well
3 Things Arnas would change for the next Black Friday funnel
Parting thoughts, what Arnas would recommend to someone joining Sugatan
Dreaming big