Is Adobe Dead? How To Avoid The Death Of Your Business

Businesses don't usually fail overnight. They lose touch with what customers actually want, pile on friction, and assume people will stick around because of their brand name. That's exactly why Adobe's recent backlash struck a nerve with so many entrepreneurs. If a company worth billions can frustrate loyal customers enough to send them searching for alternatives, what does that mean for the rest of us?

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Small business owners, listen up. You started your business, but you can't do it alone. And that means you have to hire people to help. That's where Justworks comes in. Justworks is the payroll, benefits, and global hiring platform to unburden your brain from all the complicated small business stuff. They handle the things you can't afford to get wrong, so you don't have to worry. So you can focus on the parts of running a business that you enjoy, knowing everything else is running smoothly. You don't have to worry when it just works. Ever invest in something that seemed incredible at first, but didn't live up to the hype? For example, I really wanted to love the show Mad Men. I really tried to watch it and love it, but it just didn't do anything for me. As a marketer and business person, the show was a little bit of a disappointment.

• 0:45Speaker 00

  Marketers know that feeling. They optimize for the numbers that look great, like impressions. But then we don't see revenue. LinkedIn has a word for that: bull spend. Instead, you can get the highest ROAS of major ad networks with LinkedIn ads. Cut the bull spend, advertise on LinkedIn. Spend $250 and get a $250 credit. Go to LinkedIn.com/MBAShow. Terms apply. Is Adobe officially cooked? An Adobe customer lost it when they got hit with a ridiculous cancellation fee. He got so angry that he decided to vibe code identical versions of all of Adobe's best apps, like Photoshop, Premiere, Illustrator, Lightroom, After Effects, all of them.

• 1:27Speaker 00

  And then, as a big FU, he gave all these apps away for free. Adobe is worth billions of dollars. So if it can happen to them, it can happen to you. Today, I'm going to show you how to avoid the mistakes that Adobe has been making for years. It all boils down to the fact that they're not serving their customers. They're not putting their customers first. You need to give away value, enough value, for people to want to pay you money for more. Today, we're going to discuss how Adobe got it wrong and how their competitors like Canva and even AI these days have been eating their lunch for years.

• 2:05Speaker 00

  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.

• 2:18Speaker 00

  In business, you've got to make it easy for your customers to see that you're valuable. Let me say that again. You've got to make it easy for your customers to see that you're valuable. So how does that actually happen? So the first thing is that people notice you, right? They notice what you are. They might see you on Facebook. They might see you on Instagram. They might see a video of yours. They might see an ad of some sort. Once they notice you, they need to be able to try your value. So they try. This is the next level, right? So this is like step one. Step two is try. Okay? They try. Now, the third step is critical. They have to experience some sort of value. They've got to feel like you are helping them in some way.

• 3:02Speaker 00

  The more value you give, the easier it is for them to buy, which is step four, is when they buy, okay? And the buy doesn't happen unless they see enough value, right? This is going to make sense once I now show you, this is what Adobe's been doing for years, okay? Whether it's back in the day when they were selling their software on CDs, you would have to buy their CDs for literally hundreds of dollars before you can even understand what the value they have. So for example, you might notice them on the shelf at a store, or maybe a friend told you about them. So you've got the notice part, right? But you can't really try unless you cough up hundreds of thousands of dollars, right? So people get blocked here, right?

• 3:46Speaker 00

  And they aren't able to continue down this path so they can actually get to the buy stage. Then they graduated from that and they had Adobe in the cloud, right? So they tried to make it easy with a 14-day trial, but unfortunately, you have credit card on file. They make it incredibly hard for you to cancel even during trial. So they don't actually give people a chance to see the value. So with Canva, they have millions of users that use their product, okay? So people notice, they try, they get enough value so that they can convert to a paid user, which is like a pro user with them. Now, not everybody's going to become a pro user, but they never will. They'll be a pro user if they don't give enough value in that free account. Again, Adobe's being disrupted by AI because it's easy to create software with AI. Now, software is one thing.

• 4:31Speaker 00

  We're going to talk about Adobe's offers more than just software, their services, all this other stuff. But at the end of the day, they're not giving people enough to use the product, to use it on projects, to use it on clients' works, so they can see, hey, there's really value here that I can extract, and then I can maybe pay for it once I make a little bit of money through my client work. But the point here is that Adobe's not learning this lesson. They're not putting their customers first. They're not allowing people to see the value before they buy. I want to make this super simple for you. So I'm going to give you a four-step framework. The first step is you've got to make it easy for people to try you. How many steps? How many steps does it take for somebody to experience your value? I'm not talking about they hear about you, they actually experience it.

• 5:13Speaker 00

  You've got to make it easy for people to see what you've got. You can't make it hard. Too many people make people jump through hoops, whether it's to book a call, or enter your card before you get to see anything, or you've got to buy the course before you even can see if you're even able to teach or help them in any way. You've got to make it easy. Give them free content, free episodes, templates, workshops, webinars. You've got to give them even a sample, a free session for free. If you're a consultant or a coach, don't say, let's get on a call so that we can see if we're a good fit, to see if my services can help you. No, get on the call and help them, okay? Give them value. Give them something that they can walk away with and say, wow, that actually helped me. I want more.

• 5:58Speaker 00

  You've got to remove as many blockers as possible from that value. So if you notice, here at the $100 MBA, 99% of what we offer is free. We give away tons of videos, podcast episodes, like 2,800-plus episodes, okay? Templates, guides, we do webinars, we do live coaching, we do a lot of stuff, right? Why? Because we want to make sure that people have no doubt that if we ever sell something, that they understand that we could be valuable to them, that we can help them. Basically, the only blocker for them is, can they afford it, or do they have the time for it? And we even address these blockers by offering things at different price points and things

• 6:40Speaker 00

  that don't really have anything that's time-bound, like you can sign up and consume this content, like our program, at any time. Understand that you're in the transformation business. You're not giving away information, okay? People pay you so that they can get a result. Now, again, if you're in content, you're a coach, you're a consultant, your video's online, this is good. It's a good way for you to show your value. But at the end of the day, when they come to pay you, they're paying for specific information that applies to their business. They're paying for accountability. They're paying for the fact that, hey, somebody's going to be able to answer some questions if I have them. So this is what they're really paying for, not information. Same thing when I was running my software company, Webinar Ninja.

• 7:22Speaker 00

  In software, you've got to show people that this tool actually works, that they can actually use it and get a result. A job can be done. This is why we had free trials. This is why we allowed people to use the software with no limits so that they can get a win. Now, you might be saying, Omar, this is costly. It costs me a lot of money to create content. It costs me a lot of money to offer a free trial on my software because there's server costs, and there's bandwidth, and there's all this other stuff. Yes, it's called customer acquisition cost, right? If you ran ads to drive traffic to your website so people could buy, you would pay money, right? So you're going to spend a little money, less money by the way, by giving away free value. When you give away free trials, or free plans, or free content, or free anything, this is not a marketing cost. This is a customer acquisition cost.

• 8:07Speaker 00

  It's a chance for us to be able to acquire customers on pennies on the dollar, which is really, really affordable for you as a startup, as somebody who's self-funded. But at the same time, if your product is great, which I hope it is, it's going to be the best way to sell your products or services. Let me give you a perfect example. We have a listener of the podcast that wrote in. They've been listening to the show for years. Recently, we opened up enrollment for an in-person workshop here to show people how to strategically plan for the year, so that they have their goal set, they know how, step by step, to fulfill these goals, how to make sure that they actually can achieve these goals. And when they saw that applications were open, they applied, and that program's a $2,000 program because it's in-person.

• 8:49Speaker 00

  That would never happen if I never had a podcast, if I didn't give away free content for years and built that relationship with that listener. By the way, if you're curious about this workshop, just go to 100mba.net/plan. All the details are there. Listen, the market has changed. 10 years ago, you could sell 20 videos and call it a course and charge $2,000 for this online course, okay? Because information was scarce. But now, information is readily available anywhere. We're not just talking about YouTube or blogs. We're talking about AI, just coughing up answers and giving people exactly what they need in seconds. So you've got to recognize the fact that information is not scarce, okay? It's plentiful. What is scarce, though, is implementation, right? A lot of people are getting overwhelmed with all this information.

• 9:33Speaker 00

  They don't know how to actually get going and do something with it. These days, you can get an answer from the internet, an influencer, or AI in seconds. But when it comes to legal matters for your business or your family, a quick answer is not the same as the right answer. With 25 years of experience, LegalZoom knows how to start you off right. When you need a legal hand, visit LegalZoom. Go to LegalZoom.com to get started. LegalZoom provides access to independent attorneys and its law firm, LZ Legal Services. LegalZoom is not a law firm and does not provide legal advice. The holidays are the season business owners get pulled in six directions. More calls, more requests, more chances for things to slip through the cracks. Hoping you catch it all isn't a plan.

• 10:15Speaker 00

  That's why today's episode is brought to you by QUO, spelled Q-U-O. The business phone built so you never miss a call or a customer. Ever have a lead call or text at 10:00 PM? QUO's AI agent handles both 24/7. It answers questions, gets to the details, and can text them a link to book an appointment. By morning, you've got the summary and can jump right in. And nobody should have to ask customers to repeat themselves. In QUO, every call, text, and voicemail lives in one thread, so anyone on the team can jump in already knowing the whole story. If you have a business where your customers call or text you, this is a no-brainer. You must have QUO. Money is on the line. Always say hello with QUO.

• 10:57Speaker 00

  Try QUO for free, plus get 20% off your first six months when you go to QUO.com/MBA. That's Q-U-O.com/MBA.

• 11:09Speaker 00

  All right, we're gonna move on to step three of the framework. But again, just to recap, the first step of the framework is to make it easy to try you. Step two is to give crazy value. You gotta give value when they try, right? You gotta make sure that they feel like, wow, this is really helping me. Whether that is, again, a consultation call, whether that is a trial of your software, whether that is the content they put out there in the world. This is why, in this stage, you need to give your best. The best information, the best content, the best software, whatever it might be. Because that's what's gonna lead to step three of the framework, which is when you charge for your services. And what are you gonna really charge for? Again, like we said, you're charging for transformation, not information. So let's drill into what that really looks like.

• 11:52Speaker 00

  Your actual product and service when you're actually charging your customers. Like I said, information is everywhere. You can Google it, you can find it on YouTube, you can ask AI. But results are rare, and they're worth paying for. People want a result. People want something to get done. This is why I always say services are a great business to start with, because it's easy to sell a result. I have a messy lawn, I get a lawn care service, and they clean up my lawn. There's nothing in between. There's nothing I have to do, right? It's just done. And you should see your product or service as binary like that. How do you get somebody to where they wanna be? The state they wanna be in? So if you're helping somebody to get fit and in shape, say, they wanna lose 10 KGs,

• 12:33Speaker 00

  then you, your job, is to do what you gotta do to make sure they get that result. Whether it's you have to give them a nutrition plan, whether you gotta check up on them every day on WhatsApp, whether that is you drive them to the gym if you have to, okay? I know that sounds extreme, but my point is, is that you need to do everything you can to make sure they get the result that they're looking for. Because the more consistently you can give people those results, the easier it is for you to sell it, because people are gonna be talking about you everywhere. I'll give you an example. At Webinar Ninja Software Company, one of our taglines in our marketing materials was that you can create a webinar in 10 seconds flat. Why did we have that tagline? Because at the end of the day, the reason why people are buying software is because they want something done for them quickly, pain-free, right?

• 13:16Speaker 00

  They don't wanna cobble together a bunch of pieces of software and hopefully all the integrations work. So when they actually tried it, or even saw it in a demo, wow, I just put in some information, I hit create webinar, and it's seconds flat, 10 seconds, even less than 10 seconds. It created all the pieces of the webinar, landing page, and the email notifications, and the thank you page, and everything, right? And the point here is that you're showing them that you got what you asked for. We solved the problem for you directly. So find out whatever your customer is looking for. What transformation they're looking for? What result they're looking for? Find a way to give it to them as fast as possible, as pain-free as possible. A good example of this is Amazon Prime, right? People don't wanna wait for their products or service.

• 13:59Speaker 00

  You know, they can just say, oh, I can just go and get it from the store when I come home from work. No, by Amazon having this service called Prime, which is even same-day these days, you can get your products at your door within hours. So there's no excuse. They're delivering what you want quickly. If you're enjoying today's episode, I want you to hit subscribe, because we have an upcoming episode I don't want you to miss. All about how to make your first $1,000 online. So if you are a newbie, if you are fresh, you've never made any money with your business or any kind of venture outside your paycheck, then you're gonna love this episode. So hit subscribe, so you don't miss it when it drops. Step four of the framework is to meet your customers where they are. Every customer is not the same. You're gonna have customers at different stages in the buying journey,

• 14:44Speaker 00

  or different stages in their own personal journey. If you're a fitness coach, you're gonna have people that have been working out all their life. You're gonna have people that have never worked out in their life. They never stepped foot in a gym. You're gonna have people in between. You're gonna have people that were athletes, and then they haven't exercised in 10 years. So you gotta be able to cater to all those needs. And that's just one vertical. There's people that are also in different stages when it comes to their financial ability to pay for your product or service. So for example, with Adobe's competitor, Canva, they offer a free plan. So you could pretty much do anything you want with Canva with the free plan. Now, there are some bells and whistles you can't do with the Pro. You have to have the Pro account, which is really worth it, because it's actually pretty affordable.

• 15:28Speaker 00

  But the point here is that Canva understands not everybody can afford to pay us money. So what we wanna do is we want to be the go-to solution for any kind of image creation, creating any kind of stills, or any kind of content for social media. They just go to Canva every single time. And then when they can afford to go Pro, they don't think about other competitors. They just go back to Canva and pay them. Canva understands that they wanna be the authority of creation of, whether that's slides, whether that's images, whether that's content for social media. They wanna be the authority in the minds of their customers. They don't want people to go shopping around. They want people to just get part of their ecosystem. They already have an account with Canva.

• 16:12Speaker 00

  No one wants another login, so they're like, okay, I might as well just upgrade my Canva account now that I need some of these Pro features. In business, this is called the value ladder. So do you have a value ladder in place for your business? So a typical value ladder looks like something like this. So your first step of the ladder is free content. Maybe YouTube videos, okay? Or maybe social media content. But then you want to allow people to go a little bit deeper with what you offer. So you offer an entry-level product. A good example of this is like a book. This could be an ebook, this could be a physical book, but it's $10, right? It's $15, it's $20, very entry-level. Then you might have a one-time, six-week challenge course that's $200. That's the next level of the value ladder.

• 16:56Speaker 00

  And then from there, you can offer them, you know, an ongoing membership in your community that charges, you know, $40 a month, right? So that's, you know, or $400 a year, and that is a little bit more expensive. Then you might have some in-person conferences, or some in-person events that you charge $1,000 per ticket. Then you might have a higher level that's like your mastermind group that charges $10,000 a year. You get the point. There are steps to this, and every company does this. You just don't notice this, because you probably didn't look at it very closely. But if you look at Apple, for example, they have an entry-level product called AirPods, right? And then from there, you can buy a watch. And then from watch, you can buy an iPhone. From iPhone, you can buy a MacBook. And then from a MacBook, you get MacBook Pro. From MacBook Pro, you get the desktop. And then from there, like, you constantly go up the ladder

• 17:39Speaker 00

  and constantly get more value from Apple and spend more money with them. They understand that not everybody can afford the most expensive computer. They need to enter the ecosystem somehow through a lower rung of that ladder. So those are the four steps of the framework. Number one, make it easy to try you. Make sure it's easy for your customers to try what you got. Number two, when they are trying you, you gotta make sure that whatever they're trying is the best thing you have, is the best content, is the best features in your software. If you're going to allow them to have a trial, give them the maxed-out Pro account, so that they can see all the features. Number three, charge for transformation, not information. Whether it's a product, a service, coaching, consulting, whatever it might be,

• 18:22Speaker 00

  make sure that you're getting them a result. And number four, make sure that you have a way to meet your customers where they are in the buying journey. Think about your own value ladder. See where you can add value, no matter where they are in their journey. So let's answer the question, is Adobe dead? In my opinion, no. The look-alike software that Brandon Thomas created, called ArtCraft, doesn't have support. If there's a bug, there's no way for you as a non-techy to fix it. There's no hosting in the cloud, so that you can access it anywhere. There's no way to get support. But in a way, Adobe is affected, okay? They kinda got cut, like Ivan Drago in round two of Rocky IV, okay? They have shown blood now, a little bit.

• 19:05Speaker 00

  The competitors are the winners, really, because people are now thinking twice about using Adobe. Is it really worth all that money? For some companies, it will be, to get that support and get those updates. And it's a software that they've been using for decades, so they're used to it. But for small startups, maybe not. Maybe they're gonna use some of the competitors like Canva, or some other AI tools that have come up in recent days. What I found most interesting about the story is that if you go to the forums and see what's being said on social media about this whole thing, people are not cheering for Adobe, which is interesting. They kinda wanna see it go down, which is a problem. It's not a good look for their brand. Now, having said all that, Adobe creates a great product. It's one of the best products when it comes to video creation, photo creation, photo editing with Lightroom.

• 19:51Speaker 00

  It's some of the best stuff. I've used After Effects for years when I was creating motion graphics. It's really, really good. How good? Well, this episode's gonna be edited by Adobe Premiere, not ArtCraft, because it's a software that we're used to, something we've been using. We have templates built in, all that kinda stuff. So it's something to think about, about being in the game for long enough to have such wide adoption. But there's still lessons to be learned from what happened. You can build a business that makes it easy for your customers to see your value, and therefore, when they're ready to buy, they don't think about going to their competitors. They go back to you.

• 20:24Speaker 00

  If you found today's episode helpful, and you want more practical business lessons to help start, grow, and scale your business, subscribe to the podcast. All you gotta do is hit subscribe or follow on your favorite podcast app, the one that you're using right now. By hitting subscribe, you get our next episode automatically. It's absolutely free, and it's a way for you to commit to growing your business. I'll check you in the next episode.

• 20:50Speaker 01

  Traditional home security only alerts you after a break-in, and that's too late. SimpliSafe is changing that.

• 20:57Speaker 02

  Stop, this is SimpliSafe. Police are on the way.

• 21:00Speaker 01

  We don't just alert, we help stop crime before it starts. Plans starting around a dollar a day. Right now, get 70% off your new system with professional monitoring at simplisafe.com/sxm. SimpliSafe, ahead of crime, in real time.

• 21:15Speaker 02

  Outdoor deterrence plans start at $49.99 a month. Visit simplisafe.com/licenses for alarm license information.