Pod Insights The $100 MBA Show Low Cashflow? 3 Simple Steps To Get Your Business More Money Now! About this episode You’re putting in the work, showing up every day, and still watching your bank balance barely move. It’s frustrating when it feels like the harder you push, the less it actually changes anything. That pressure to bring in more money can make you think you need more leads, more ads, and more hustle, but what if that’s not the real problem?
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1:00 Speaker 03 If your business has a cash flow problem right now, I can almost guarantee you're trying to fix it the wrong way. Low cash flow is one of the most common problems in business, but it's also the most solvable problem in business. Yet, most business owners, they try to solve this by chasing more leads, by running more ads, by hustling harder for new customers. Does this sound familiar? Here's what I've learned after 20 years of building businesses. Almost never do you need more customers to make more cash flow. You have a conversion problem, in most cases, than a leads problem. You just need a better strategy with the customers you already have. You need to make sure that you capitalize on making more with the customers that you already are getting.
1:45 Speaker 03 Today, I'm going to give you three specific steps to get your business more money. Not eventually, now, today. These are the exact levers I pull regularly in my own businesses when cash flow is not where it needs to be. They work, and they're proven, and I'll prove it to you today. Let's get into it.
2:12 Speaker 03 Welcome back to the $100 MBA Show. I'm your host Omar Zenhome, where I deliver practical business lessons three times a week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, to help you start, grow, and scale your business.
2:25 Speaker 03 If this show has helped in any way, it would be amazing if you could drop us a quick review on whatever app you're using to listen to this podcast right now. It helps me and my team bring new episodes every week, and more importantly, more entrepreneurs will be able to discover our podcast, so you can help someone else start their journey. Thanks so much. Step one: Raise your prices. I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, Omar, if I raise my prices, I will lose customers. Guess what? You will, alright? But the name of the game is not to have the most customers. The name of the game is to make more money, and that is the goal. I've tested this over a dozen times, and I never make less money when I raise prices.
3:07 Speaker 03 The math always works out. The data does not change. Every single time I raise prices, I might get less customers, but the total revenue I make is always more. When I was in the middle of building and growing our software company, Webinar Ninja, I brought on a man named Patrick Campbell. He's the founder of ProfitWell, who later sold his company for $200 million, and he is the pricing expert on the internet. What he showed me was that most businesses are significantly underpricing relative to the value they deliver. Let me break that down. Your prices are often way lower than the value you're giving your customers. Not slightly underpriced, significantly underpriced,
3:51 Speaker 03 which means you have a lot of room to raise your prices. And the reason why people don't raise their prices is really just psychological. The founder is pricing based on what they feel is comfortable, and that's not how you price. You need to price based on what the market is willing to pay. Otherwise, you're leaving a ton of money on the table. You're just giving people a price that they will pay for, but you're not actually extracting as much value as you can on both ends, meaning that they get more value from you, and you get more value from them, meaning dollar bills. Let me just break down this term willingness to pay. Well, it's all based on the result and what it's worth to the customer. If the customer is going to get what they want, they're going to be willing to pay.
4:36 Speaker 03 And here's the math that illustrates why this matters so much. I'm going to take it back 15 years when I started my web design agency and I charged $1,500 per website. Then I charged 2,000, then I charged 5,000. And here is what surprised me in this process as I was raising prices. It was easier to sell the $5,000 website than it was to sell the $2,000 website or the $1,500 website. Why? Because when you sell a product at a price point, so for example, when I sold my website design services for $5,000 per website, I got a different customer. I attracted a different customer. They are buying value, not price. The most important thing for them is a great website, not the price.
5:21 Speaker 03 And that's two different types of customers, two different kinds of interactions, or I would say experiences of selling your product. They have fewer objections, they're easy to work with, they pay on time. It's just a better experience. And one of the things that people don't talk about is when you deal with difficult clients, price-sensitive clients, they're not draining all your energy, whether they're negotiating every single invoice, or they're asking you for 1,000 revisions, or whatever it might be, whatever your business requires in terms of what you deliver to the customer. When you deal with high-value clients, and by the way, $5,000 for a website is not like the top of the scale. You know, people pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for a website, even millions of dollars. But the point I'm trying to make here is that even just me increasing it from 1,500
6:06 Speaker 03 to 2,000 to 5,000, I saw a difference of customer, which made my life a whole lot easier and made my business easier to run because I was making more money. When you upgrade your clients, you actually produce better margins, which means you actually keep more money, you get better results, you get better referrals, and you have a better business on your hands. So you do nothing but win. And the only thing that's holding you back from raising prices is you, is your psychological block of saying that no one's going to pay this price. But you haven't even proven it to yourself. You have to test. And that's what we're going to talk about a bit later, that pricing is really just a series of test experiments that you're going to go through. So I want to give you an exercise so you can take this leap.
6:49 Speaker 03 Look at your current pricing and ask one question. What would happen if I raise my prices by 20% tomorrow? Just 20%, you don't have to double your prices. Raise it by 20% because it's going to make a big difference for you and your business. When will you do it? Not eventually, will it be tomorrow, will it be next week? Put it in the calendar. Commit to raising your prices. The customers who leave based on that 20% increase were just not meant for you and not meant for the future of your business. And for those who like to nerd out and do the math, I used to just kind of tell myself this story so that I can be able to raise my prices more comfortably. I said to myself, well, if I raise my prices by 20%, that means that if one in five customers leave because of this raising of prices, I still won't be making less money,
7:34 Speaker 03 which made me feel a bit more comfortable because I felt like that's kind of ridiculous. You know, 20% of my customers will leave all of a sudden. At most I've ever seen when I raised prices, I saw like 3% of my customers leave. Step two, sell more to customers you already have. This is very simple. Here is the most underrated way for you to increase your cash flow that's ever been invented. You have an existing customer. You don't need to sell them on you, your brand, your products, your services. They are sold. They already bought from you. They're happy with what you have. They're the easiest people to sell to because they are already a customer, already getting value, already know that they're not going to have to guess if they're going to get a return on their investment.
8:16 Speaker 03 They've already made an investment in you, paid you money and got value. Why am I stressing this? Because most businesses spend the majority of their time and their marketing budgets trying to acquire new customers. Customers that have never heard of you, don't trust you, don't know what you're all about and are still on the fence. This is what's called a cold lead. They're called cold because it takes a very long time for them to heat up and warm up and become a warm lead. You don't have a warm lead. You have a customer that has already proven they're happy to pay you. So I always say the easiest sale in business is the next sale to a happy customer because they trust you already. The relationship is already there. The evidence that you've delivered is already there.
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9:29 Speaker 05 What do I gift my mom and nieces? Walmart has top brands you know, like Ninja, Disney, Lego. Oh, Dad loves music. Sonos can bring his songs to life with sound that hits just right. And my coffee-obsessed bestie? Delaney Brews Coffee, right for mornings extra bright. All those great brands at Walmart? Who knew? We knew, now you do too.
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10:01 Speaker 03 Here are three specific ways I like to sell more to customers. First one, offer an upsell. Now, a lot of people don't like this word "upsell", but I'm going to break it down. It's basically helping people beyond how you've helped them. Okay? What is a logical next thing a customer who has already bought from you would need? By the way, we have no problem with this as consumers. A lot of people, they bought a MacBook, an Apple MacBook, because they have an iPhone. They had an iPhone, they loved the iPhone experience, they liked the ecosystem. And then when they needed a new laptop, they're like, "Oh, maybe I should check out the Macs because I really like the Apple iPhone." That's an upsell, right? Apple sold them something else based on the fact that they enjoyed what they've already bought from them. A perfect example is here at the $100 MBA.
10:46 Speaker 03 We have a short course, it's only three days, called Own Your Job. It's only $29. And the reason why it's only $29 is because we want to give people a chance to try us out, to put some money down and trust us. If they delivered on a $29 product, there's a good chance they'll deliver on a more expensive product. At the end of this course, we offer them the $100 MBA program, which shows them how to start, grow, and scale the business that they just kind of... Started out with and learned how to build inside of the Own Your Job program. Now, this is a hundred dollars a month. So as you can see, I'm just helping people further on on the path. You can't help people with everything at once. So you need to kind of piecemeal it, just like the Apple example, right? They can solve their phone problem by giving them a better phone than an Android,
11:30 Speaker 03 for example, with an iPhone, according to Apple. But you know, they have other problems that need to be solved. They need a computer, maybe they need a speaker. You know, Apple offers, you know, Apple TV. Maybe they want to be entertained. All these things are solutions to other problems that Apple solves. So what you want to do to figure out your own upsell ideas is to do what's called a value ladder. You want to map out the journey of what your business or what your customers go through in your business. So what's the first step of the ladder? Maybe that's something free. Maybe it's a YouTube channel or a podcast. Maybe the second step of the ladder is joining your email list and getting your newsletter. And then another step of the ladder after that is maybe an entry level product. Maybe the next step of the ladder is maybe your online course.
12:11 Speaker 03 Maybe the next step of the ladder is your, you know, personal coaching program where you have group coaching. Maybe the next step of ladder is your one-on-one coaching. Maybe there's another step of the ladder where you do like this huge retreat event that costs, you know, $20,000 for a ticket. You get the point. You can map out the journey your customer would go through and you increase the value you offer them as the price goes up. The second way is you can introduce a retainer or a subscription. If you currently do project-based work, what would it look like if you convert some of those clients into a monthly retainer? Reoccurring revenue is one of the most powerful cash flow stabilizers in any service business. So that you don't need to chase clients month after month.
12:54 Speaker 03 By having a retainer or some sort of reoccurring revenue model, you secured this customer and they continue to pay you month over month. In other words, one client on a monthly retainer is worth more to your cash flow than three one-off projects or four one-off projects, because they're continually to pay you over and over. Third way is to simply ask. Call your five best customers this week. And if you don't know your five best customers, go into your pricing or your, I would say, payments dashboard, or for me it's Stripe. If you use Stripe, you can literally just filter for the customers that paid you the most. And that identifies your best customers. Now, you don't have to go through hundreds of customers. Just call your five best customers, email them, message them, get in contact with them.
13:37 Speaker 03 Tell them that you're working on something new. Ask them what their biggest challenge is right now. Listen to them. Find out what problems they have. Why? Because they're going to tell you what your next product should be. They're going to give you your blueprint. They're going to explain all the problems that annoy them, the things they hate. And you're going to see a commonality through your best customers, because they're probably similar in terms of the problems that they're having. And you're going to be able to shape and create a solution to their problem. Now, you don't need to sell them, because they already said, hey, I have this problem. If somebody presents a solution, they're going to be more than willing to pay for it. You can literally just do this right now. Go into your payment processor, find your top five customers,
14:22 Speaker 03 reach out to them via email. By the way, a lot of people don't do this. They don't talk to their customers. For some reason, they're scared or they feel like they're bothering somebody. Every time I reach out to a customer personally via email, on a call, via a text message, or a WhatsApp, or whatever it might be, they are shocked. They're like, wow, the founder of this company is actually sending me an email? This is amazing. I'm happy to give you information. Thank you for spending the time to ask me what I need. They are just grateful that somebody actually cares. Step three, cut what is not making you money. This is one of the hardest things to do in business, because it's emotional. And in tech, they call this killing your darlings. And yet, it's one of the most immediately impactful financial things you can do for your business. Most businesses with cash flow problems
15:05 Speaker 03 are not just under earning. They are overspending on things that are not generating revenue. Remember, cash flow is both ways, how much you make, but also how much you keep. Let's go back to Apple. When Steve Jobs got asked to come back as CEO of Apple after being away for a while. And working on other businesses. The first thing he did is he cut a lot of their product line. He said, "We have too many products. It's confusing. We're not making money on all of them." And they cut it down to just two products. And the reason why he did this is because he realized that it's better for us to have two solid, really valuable products that customers want than to have 10 products that are kind of meh. Right? You want to make sure you do the same for your business. You probably have products and offerings on your website that you're maintaining,
15:51 Speaker 03 that you're updating, that are not really making you a lot of revenue. What I've found is when I look at all my products, usually there are one or two products that are making 80% of all the revenue. And the rest are really just wasting my time and spending money that I shouldn't be spending. There's a cost in maintaining products in your business. Now, when I say products, I'm not only talking about the products you sell. There's also projects you work on, like marketing channels that never convert a single customer, but you keep doing it for some reason. Okay? And as I say, if you continue to do the same thing and expect different results, it's the definition of insanity. Don't do this. Analyze what's happening in your business and choose the winners. Back the right horses. And I can go on and on with this. This could be applicable to freelancers or teammates in your business.
16:36 Speaker 03 Office spaces twice the size that you don't need. Things that are just wasteful. You know, you got to start trimming the fat and being a little bit more economical about what you spend your money on and make sure every dollar that goes out, you're able to point and say, "Hey, that dollar is getting me at least $2 back." I want to share with you a rule that I like to apply in all my businesses. And this is a rule I kind of came up with about a decade ago. And it's really served me very well. And here it is. Every expense either generates revenue, protects revenue, or improves the product. It has to do one of these three things at least, right? It could do more than one. But it has to at least generate revenue, protect revenue, keep the revenue up, and improve the product.
17:18 Speaker 03 It has to some way improve the business in these three ways. If it does not do these three things, it gets cut. Not reviewed, not put on probation, not "I'll think about it later." It gets cut immediately. And you have to be clinical about this. You can't Just be so romantic about every little thing in your business because it's gonna cost you sometimes your entire business. It might cost you the fact that you might go, you know, out of business because your expenses are out of control. This is why I am religious about making sure you have a P and L sheet, a profit and loss sheet that you review regularly. Every single Monday, I look at my P and L sheet and I'm obsessive about it because I want to make sure that we're always making more than that we're spending. And if you don't have a P and
18:00 Speaker 03 L sheet, don't worry, I got your back. You can just go to 100mba.net templates. It's one of our many templates that we give away for free. You don't pay for anything. I give you the templates with all the formulas. It's basically a Google sheet that just does all the math for you and you just got to plug in your own numbers. You could do the same every single week. You can do what's called Money Mondays. Every Monday morning, spend five to 10 minutes looking at what came in and what went out so that you can have your eyes on it. And like Peter Drucker says, what gets measured gets managed. If you are not measuring something, you're not aware of what's happening, right? For example, if you're trying to lose weight and you never step on the scale on a regular basis, you're not going to know if you're gaining or losing weight. So you
18:40 Speaker 03 need to keep on with your money, right? Business is money. You got to keep your eyes on the money. You got to make sure that you're looking at your P and L regularly and you have to make adjustments based on what you learn and what you see every single Money Monday. So as an exercise to implement this step, go ahead and use the P and L sheet I just talked about at 100mba.net templates, download the P and L sheet, plug in your numbers, make sure you look at it once a week. Hey, if these three steps are already showing you where your cash flow is leading to, where it's leaking, what's happening in your business, I want you to subscribe to the show, not only to say thank you to us, the whole entire team, but also because I don't want you to miss an upcoming episode that we're working on right now. The episode's called Follow This Blueprint
19:25 Speaker 03 to Make 10K Per Month Selling Digital Products That Won't Get Killed by AI. Okay, a lot of people worried about AI and taking over the world. I've crafted this episode so that you don't have to worry about that and creating offers that require your But also require that human touch so that you know AI is not really competing with you anymore. And there's a lot of opportunity now because people are kind of inundated with AI. A lot of people don't even like to hear the word AI anymore. And you have the opportunity of actually offering something that has nothing to do with AI. That can make you at least $10,000 per month selling a digital product around this area. So go ahead and hit subscribe so you don't miss that episode. All right, let's pull this all together.
20:10 Speaker 03 Here's the thing about the three steps that we just outlined that a lot of people miss. They work together. These steps are not in isolation. You need to raise your prices to increase the revenue per customer. You need to start selling more to existing customers to increase the lifetime value of every relationship. Meaning how much money each customer gives you during their lifetime with you. You need to cut what's not working so you can increase the margins in your business. So that you can reinvest in your business. All of these work all together to make a perfect formula. Apply all three simultaneously and the impact compounds immediately. You will see an impact immediately as soon as you do it. As soon as I actually discovered this and started to do these three things.
20:52 Speaker 03 I automatically started to feel like, wow, I actually have a lot of control over how much money I can make. And let me give you some simple examples. Say your business is currently generating $10,000 a month with margins of 30%. That is $3,000 in profit. Okay, you're making $10,000, 30% margins. That means $3,000 is staying in your pocket. Now we're going to do a little math, don't get scared, okay? Now you raise your prices by 20%. Not by 30 or 40 or 50 or 100%, just 20%. You also sell one upsell or have a retainer to two existing customers adding $2,000 in reoccurring revenue. And you cut $1,500 in expenses that were just not making you any money.
21:35 Speaker 03 If we do the math, you are now generating $14,000 at revenue at significantly high margins. Your profit does not just go up by the revenue increases. It multiplies because you're combining all three forces. Why does this magic happen? Because you're earning more per customer. Retaining customers longer and you're keeping more of every dollar. That is not a cash flow fix. That is a business transformation. You are now running a different type of business. And it does not require a single new customer. That's the whole point I'm trying to make today. It doesn't actually require you to spend more on leads and to get more customers through the door. No, we're talking about the existing customer base you already have. So there you have it.
22:19 Speaker 03 Before I go, I want to leave you with this. This is simple for a reason, but a lot of people misunderstand simple frameworks. Anything easy to do, anything that's simple to do is also easy not to do. It's easy to go for a walk every morning, but it's also easy not to do. Your job is to do it. All right, the three steps to get your business more money right now is to raise your prices because you already certainly know that you are charging way less than you should be charging. And there's a lot of value that you can actually extract from the market. Number two, you want to sell more to the customers you already have because they're the easiest sell that you can make. And number three, cut what's not making you money. Because the name of the game is keeping as much money, not making as much money.
23:02 Speaker 03 Cash flow problems are almost never about the lack of customers. It's about your actual framework and refining these three steps in your business. Once you've optimized this and you have really dialed all three steps, then, then you can start thinking about bringing in more customers. And then guess what? Your growth is going to compound faster than it ever would have been because you don't have a leaky bucket. Right? You're not putting in customers and losing them just as fast. I hope this episode has showed you how to stabilize your cash flow, how to make more money and keep more money. If you want to continue learning, I highly recommend a recent episode that we released called "A Social Media Strategy for People Who Hate Social Media."
23:45 Speaker 03 Okay, I was a big social media hater for over a decade. And then I decided to challenge myself and say, hey, what if I was good at social media? What if social media wasn't a waste of time and I can actually have it help me grow my business? That was about two years ago and I'm so glad I made that decision. The reason why I'm sharing this is because in that episode, I share with you what did work and what didn't work in those two years. It's called "A Social Media Strategy for People Who Hate Social Media." Go ahead and check it out.
24:12 Speaker 03 If you found today's episode helpful and you want more practical business lessons to help you start, grow, and scale your business, the best thing you could do is subscribe to this podcast. Hit subscribe or follow on your favorite podcast app, the one that you're using right now, whether it's Apple or Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts. By hitting subscribe, you get our next episode automatically and it's the best way to support the show. It's absolutely free and it's a way for you to commit to growing your business. And now that you've subscribed, I'll check you in the next episode.
24:48 Speaker 00 Hey Fidelity, can I get a second opinion on stocks in the Fidelity app?
24:53 Speaker 01 With Fidelity, it's easy to get an outside opinion from independent experts in a single score.
24:58 Speaker 00 And then?
24:59 Speaker 01 When you're ready, trade US stocks and ETFs with no commissions.
25:03 Speaker 00 That's right.
25:04 Speaker 01 I am always right. Investing involves risk, including risk of loss. $0 commission does not apply to customers designated by Fidelity as a professional equity trader. A limited number of ETFs are subject to a service fee of $100. See details at fidelity.com/commissions. Fidelity Brokerage Services, LLC, member NYSE, SIPC.
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