Pod Insights The $100 MBA Show MBA2633 Q&A Wednesday: No One Wants To Invest In My Business. What Do I Do? About this episode Feeling stuck because investors keep saying no—or worse, ignoring you completely? That’s exactly what Ryan wanted to know. Wondering why some businesses attract funding effortlessly while others struggle? If no one’s betting on your big idea, you're in the right place. In today's episode, Omar reveals why investors aren’t lining up just yet—and, more importantly, how to fix it. Learn why customer traction beats a great pitch, how to sharpen your offer so buyers can’t resist, and the four-step game plan to turn rejection into unstoppable progress. Ready to turn things around? Hit play at the top of this page and dive into today’s episode—you might just find the missing piece that changes everything! To submit your questions, visit 100mba.net/q. Watch the episodes on YouTube: https://lm.fm/GgRPPHiSUBSCRIBEYouTube | Apple Podcast | Spotify | Podcast Feed
Transcript 0:00 Speaker 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.
0:45 Speaker 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: bullspend. Instead, you can get the highest ROAS of major ad networks with LinkedIn ads. Cut the bullspend, advertise on LinkedIn. Spend $250 and get a $250 credit. Go to LinkedIn.com/MBAShow. Terms apply. On today's Q&A Wednesday, Ryan asks, "No one wants to invest in my business. What do I do?" If you're hearing a lot of no's, or worse, silence, it can feel brutal. But hear me out. You don't need investors to succeed. You need customers. And actually, they work hand in hand. Today, I'm going to show you how to flip this frustration into fuel.
1:30 Speaker 00 Regardless if you're looking for investors, or people just generally are not believing in what you're doing, I want to show you how to build a business that investors, or anybody, would wish they had the chance to invest in later. And by the way, if you want to submit a question here on Q&A Wednesday, head on over to 100mba.net/askaway and Ask Away will answer it right here on the show. Let's get into it.
1:56 Speaker 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.
2:10 Speaker 00 The first concept that we need to agree on is that investors don't fund ideas. They fund results. If you ever watch the show Shark Tank, the entrepreneur walks into the tank and pitches to the investors, to these billionaires, right? And the first question that the sharks ask the entrepreneur, the absolute first question every single time is, how many sales do you have? Because that's all that matters, okay? It could be a great idea. They could fall in love with the branding and the designing. They might really love this person that's pitching, but it all doesn't matter if the market doesn't like it, right? Their opinion is not really that important. What really is important is the opinion of the marketplace.
2:52 Speaker 00 And if people actually are willing to part with their hard-earned dollar and pay for this product or service. So the first question they ask is, how many sales do you have? How much money have you made? How much revenue have you made in this first year, or second year, or up to this year, up to this point? Why do you think that's the first question? Why is that question so important? Well, because most investors are in the business of taking huge risks, right? It sounds counterintuitive, but investors are looking to limit the risk as much as possible. Think about it. They worked so hard to make their millions of dollars. Why would they want to waste it on a high-risk product that is not proven? They want to invest in something that has proof, has a track record of selling, of being popular, of being liked, being wanted, being needed in the marketplace.
3:37 Speaker 00 They're in the business of avoiding risk as much as possible. So they want to see sales. They want to see traction. They want to see demand. They want to see evidence that you can execute on the idea. If you don't have these things yet, you're not unlucky. You're just early, and you're just asking for investment too early. Well, you might be asking, well, Omar, what about pre-revenue companies? There's plenty of companies that get funding before they make any revenue. Yes. But they do have some proof that people want what they have, whether it's signups, whether it's free users, whether it's traction based on previous businesses they've had. For example, a very successful and well-known entrepreneur in Australia, Danny Milham founded a mattress company called Koala Mattresses.
4:21 Speaker 00 And they're one of those online mattress companies that deliver you a mattress that's affordable and has a crazy money-back guarantee. And they also sell furniture and all kinds of stuff. But this business that he founded was wildly successful. It's probably the number one online furniture store in Australia. And he did very well. So when he started his next business, which is called Milk Run, which was like a delivery service business, he raised capital so quickly because he had success in a previous business. In fact, he raised $11 million in two weeks. How did that happen? Well, because investors see proof. He has a track record. He can do this. It's not about the Milk Run idea. It's about that this entrepreneur can execute.
5:04 Speaker 00 This entrepreneur has built a successful, profitable business. My money is more likely to get a return on investment with this person.
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6:35 Speaker 00 So what does this mean for you? Well, we got to dig deep on what's the real reason why no one's investing in you. Well, it's probably because the business doesn't have enough traction yet. So for example, if you can't get customers or enough customers, it's not just a sales problem. It's a business model problem. That means your offer, your pricing, your product, your positioning, something is off. Something isn't compelling enough yet. Investors aren't rejecting you personally. They're reacting to the current strengths of your business model. They're reacting to the strengths of the opportunity that you are offering them. And that's fixable. We can change that. But your mission now isn't to convince an investor.
7:14 Speaker 00 It's to improve your business until the value is so obvious that customers show up without hesitation. Once you have that kind of a snowball effect where customers are coming in and telling other people and your business is kind of just growing organically, you will get investors knocking on your door. Trust me, it's happened to me with Webinar Ninja, my software company. You'll get emails upon emails of people wanting to invest. And when that happens, you have leverage, right? You are not begging for dollars now. They want to invest in you so you can get a better valuation. You can get a better deal. You can get more money for less percent, all kinds of things. And what often happens and what happened with me with Webinar Ninja is that when you start attracting these investors, your business is starting to grow.
7:58 Speaker 00 You're starting to build, you're starting to scale and you start to realize I don't even need investors. I can do this on my own bootstrapped. Let's get super practical. Here's exactly what I would do if I were you and I was building a business that is looking for investment but doesn't have traction yet. Number one, I'd bootstrap like a boss, okay? Start lean. Strip away anything that doesn't help you build, sell or deliver your product. Remember, profit is the Best investor you'll ever have. If you have profit in your business that allows you to pay yourself and reinvest in your business, you have a growth machine. It's almost impossible for you to lose if you are that profitable, where you're profitable enough to pay yourself or pay your employees, cover your overhead, and then from there have money left over to reinvest in your business and grow.
8:43 Speaker 00 Number two, I would rework and test your offer. If people aren't buying, change something, okay? Is your offer solving a real painful problem? Painful enough for them to want a solution? Is it crystal clear what they're gonna get, what that solution looks like? And then finally, is the transformation you're promising exciting enough? Does it get them perking up and be like, wow, that's, that's cool, that's great, I want that? If not, adjust, test again. And by the way, this doesn't end. You continue to do this as the market starts changing it, as your product starts evolving. That's normal, that's business. Business isn't a sell and forget it. It's an experiment. It constantly needs to be improved and constantly needs to be iterated upon, because that's how you stay competitive.
9:26 Speaker 00 Number three, I would focus obsessively on customer traction. Build a mini-launch, like a landing page. Have an offer on that landing page just compelling, that's like a no-brainer, that they would feel foolish not to buy. Have a simple way for them to pay, a checkout process. Push out that product in the world and get feedback from your early customers. Use everything at your disposal, content marketing, Instagram, webinars, partnerships, networking. If you don't have a network, build a network. Your goal is essentially to get your first 10 customers. Once you have your 10 customers, learn from them what they love about your product and what you can improve about it. Ask them, hey, if you love my product or service, would you be willing to tell other people about it?
10:08 Speaker 00 Not everybody's gonna do so, but a few will, and that will allow you to get more customers. So, first goal is 10 customers, next goal is 100, then 1,000. Every single sale along that path, along that journey, is validation that you are on the right path, that you are iterating correctly. And number four, lastly, document everything. Investors don't fund dreams, okay? They fund momentum. So track your customer acquisition costs, track your revenue growth, track your conversion rates, track your customer feedback, the testimonials and the information you're gathering for them. Good and bad, it's okay. This creates a story of your growth that investors later on can ignore.
10:51 Speaker 00 A good, easy way to do this is what they call building in public. A lot of founders, especially in the SaaS space, they build their product from zero in public. Unlike X, for example, on Twitter, they share the journey, say, hey, I'm launching today. I got my first sale today, but I'm now making a thousand dollars a month in MRR, right? Now I'm making 20,000 MRR. I made my first hire. They document the journey, not only to share and kind of see it as a marketing activity, but also it's a great way for you to have a record of your story that you can share to investors later on. Let me give you a personal example of everything I just taught today. And that's my software company, Webinar Ninja, that I launched in 2014. Nobody offered us funding when we got started. Nobody was throwing money at us.
11:34 Speaker 00 We had to pre-sell our product to fill our beta spots, to prove the product had legs, to prove that we're actually fulfilling a need in the market for simpler, easier, more effective, more engaging webinars. It was literally just a landing page with mockups and a video and a bio blog, right? We generated real cash in that process and allowed us to have some cash flow. We had about 150 beta members in the first 48 hours buy our pre-sold product. Again, they don't have access to the product yet. They're getting it in a few months, but we pre-sold it for early access. And then we opened up another 100 spots. So we had a total of 250 spots. Those 100 spots sold out in another 24 hours.
12:14 Speaker 00 So within 72 hours, we had 250 beta members. That funded development, that built traction. But most of all, it gave me proof that this is a product that needs to exist in the world and people actually want it. I'm not building a business based on hunches or guesses or the fact that I think it's a brilliant idea. The people out there, the marketplace has told me it's a great idea because they're willing to put money down on the promise of this product. So the moral of the story is traction first, fund later, okay? Worry about the investors. Later, once you have traction and by the time investors are interested, you have leverage now. You have, you're in a position of power and that's where you want to live. And that's real freedom. All right. To wrap up today's lesson, I want to leave you with this.
12:57 Speaker 00 Ryan, who asked today's question and anybody else who's listening, if no one wants to invest in you yet, don't get bitter, get better. All right. Improve your idea, sharpen your offer, get closer to your customer, deliver undeniable value, because when your business is irresistible to your customers, investors are going to line up. And if they don't, guess what? You still win because your business will be real, profitable and yours. How good is that? It's a win-win. If you want to keep on learning from me, if you want to go deeper every single week, we have a great, great resource for you. It's my three things newsletter. It's something that I absolutely love because it allows me to coach you from afar. Every week I send you an email with three things,
13:40 Speaker 00 something to think about, something to do and something to learn. These three things allows you to grow week after week, allowing those skills to compound. It's absolutely free. All you gotta do is go to 100mba.net and sign up for any of our free guides and you get added to our newsletter automatically. Thanks so much for tuning into the podcast. If you've enjoyed today's episode, if you enjoyed any of our episodes and you want to say thank you, the best way you could do that is just to hit that subscribe button or to hit that follow button on whatever app you're using right now to consume this content, whether it's on YouTube, whether it's on Spotify, whether it's on Apple Podcasts, whatever it might be, by hitting subscribe or follow, you allow us to grow. Thank you so much in advance for doing that. Until next time, keep on going.
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