How Running a Sale Actually Works (Mother's Day Is 18 Days Out)
Mother's Day is coming up in just 18 days. If you've been putting off planning your sale, this conversation lays out exactly how to run it.
Table of Contents
Why attention in 2026 is 15 tiny flashes, not one long read
The Trireme: why coordinated oars beat more oars every time
The 20+ marketing surfaces you already own (and the 3 you actually use)
The Sale Equation: Incentive + Scarcity × Attention
The 3-4 week calendar: warm-up, launch, reminders, 24-hour push, extend day, follow-up
Why humor and memes charge the battery for the sale push
The Mustang Sally walkthrough: one message, 8 coordinated channels
The Ancient Greek Warship That Still Wins Sales Today
Patrick opens with a story about the trireme, that Greek warship where coordinated rowers beat sheer numbers every time. That metaphor stuck with me because it's exactly what most of us get wrong about running a sale. We think more is better. More emails, more posts, more platforms. But what actually works is getting all your channels rowing together at the same moment.
He walks through what he calls the Sale Equation, which is simple but easy to forget: Incentive + Scarcity × Attention. All three have to show up, or the sale doesn't move. You can have the best offer in the world, but if nobody sees it seven times in three days, it might as well not exist.
The 3-Week Calendar Every Sale Needs
What really opened my eyes was the timeline. Most artists wait until the sale starts to promote it. Patrick lays out a 3 to 4 week structure: warm-up content that's funny and human, a launch day push, midpoint reminders, the 24-hour countdown, maybe an extend day if it makes sense, and then follow-up. The warm-up phase is the part I never thought about before. It's where you're posting memes, stories, anything that gets people smiling and paying attention, so when you do ask them to buy, they're already tuned in.
He uses Mustang Sally as an example. One core message about a Mother's Day sale, sent across email, Instagram feed, Instagram Stories, Reels, Facebook, SMS, maybe TikTok, and a hello bar on the website. Same words, same deadline, all hitting at once. That's the coordinated oars thing again.
Why This Applies to Everything You'll Ever Promote
Patrick reframes the whole episode at the end and says these rules work for bake sales, gallery openings, fundraisers, anything where you need people to show up or buy on a deadline. That part hit me because I always thought of this as "online marketing tactics." But it's not. It's how you get any group of people to do anything together at the same time.
If Mother's Day has you scrambling, this one walks you through it step by step. And if you've got a sale coming up later this year, the playbook is the same.