MBA2653 5 Online Businesses That ALMOST Never Fail

Thinking of diving into the world of online business, but not sure if your big idea will sink or swim? What if you could spot the business models that are most likely to succeed—before you even get started? In this lesson, Omar lays out the five types of online businesses that consistently deliver results. Backed by real-world experience and solid data, you'll get a clear look at what works, why it works, and how you can use these insights to choose the model that fits you best. Time to stack the odds in your favor—just hit play at the top of this page and jump into today’s lesson. You’re closer than you think to building something that really sticks. Watch the episodes on YouTube: https://lm.fm/GgRPPHiSUBSCRIBEYouTube | Apple Podcast | Spotify | Podcast Feed

• 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: 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. You might want to start an online business, but you might be afraid it'll flop, that you'll spend months building something that no one buys. Fair enough, because most online businesses do fail, but not these. Today, I'm going to break down the five online businesses that almost never fail.

• 1:26Speaker 00

  This is backed by data, all with proven track records, high success rates, and that I've either built myself or seen succeed repeatedly with my students inside the $100 MBA. And again, I'm going to rank these from lowest to highest success rate, based on real-world data, not dreams.

• 1:49Speaker 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.

• 2:02Speaker 00

  Your success really depends on how hard you work, how much of a problem you're solving, the market, a lot of factors. So, nothing is guaranteed success, but I'm trying to give you statistically, what models work the best. Let's start with number one, which has a 40% success rate. Not bad, not the best, we're going to get there at the end. But that's freelancing and coaching. You've got a skill, writing, marketing, design, coding, even career coaching. And you're offering it directly to others for a fee. That is basically what this model is. Why does it work? Well, it requires nearly zero startup capital. You can find your first client in a week. You can learn how to sell and deliver and manage customers very fast

• 2:47Speaker 00

  because you're going to be learning on the job. So, it's quite easy to get started, but also to get traction quickly. So, why does this business model fail? Well, the reason why I'm actually pointing out why they fail is so that you can look out for these things and prevent these from happening. Number one, burnout. A lot of freelancers burn out because they never actually scale, they never actually delegate and hire other people. Number two, the inability to charge high enough rates. You need to continue to increase your rates as you get better at what you do. And then finally, poor client management or communication. When you're serving people, when you're providing a service, communication is everything because communication lines up expectations. So, how do you make it work? How do you make it successful?

• 3:30Speaker 00

  Well, number one, you want to specialize. Don't be a life coach. Be a career coach for first-generation immigrants who want to break into tech. That's very specific, right? You're specializing in people that are in tech, that are first-generation immigrants, that don't understand the culture of their world. Next, you want to productize your services. Offer three clear packages is a good place to start. Also, you want to focus on results. People pay for transformation for an end result, not hours. A $100 MBA student named Tasha went from offering general copywriting services to niching down to email sequences for course creators. In six months, she was booked out. She had no audience prior to this,

• 4:14Speaker 00

  just a clear offer and just some hustle outreach. Second business model that has a pretty decent success rate, 50% success rate, productized services. This is coaching or freelancing leveled up.

• 4:30Speaker 00

  You can take your skills and turn them into repeatable offers that don't require constant custom work. Pre-defined packages that people can choose from. Think like podcast editing packages or website design services. Like, "I'll get your website designed in a week." That website is five pages, for example. That's one package. Maybe monthly blog post bundles. So, for example, you write four blog posts for every month and it gets sent to them in Google Docs. Why does this work? Well, it scales better than one-on-one freelancing. Also, buyers love clarity and predictability. So, it's clear what they're getting. And it's also easier to delegate and then eventually step away from this business because

• 5:13Speaker 00

  you can create procedures and SOPs and a way to create each of these packages and deliver these packages to customers. Somebody else can do it for you and then you benefit from just having other people's time, leveraging their time and effort in order for you to grow your business. So, what's my advice to make sure that this business model works? Well, define your scope tightly. Exactly what you're offering, what people will get. Next, price based on value, not time. What they're going to get for what they're paying. Also, use a system. Templates, standard operating procedures, documentation. Google Docs is going to be your friend here. Here's a real example. I had a website creation agency where I created websites for bloggers and creators. I had defined packages.

• 5:58Speaker 00

  A five-page website, a seven-page website, and a 10-page website. And then I had some add-ons if they wanted some custom animation or some fancy things on their website. But the point here is that someone's just getting started, they're like, "Hey, I don't need all the bells and whistles. Just give me the five-page website." And I created a five-page website for them in a short period of time, got them up and running. I showed them how to add their content, and that's it. I delivered it. I got paid. It was clean. They knew exactly what they were getting. I didn't have to waste time, you know, days or even weeks creating custom deals or packages for my customers. They knew exactly what they're getting from the pricing page. They purchased it. I delivered it. 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.

• 6:43Speaker 00

  Hoping you catch it all isn't a plan. 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.

• 7:28Speaker 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 dot com slash MBA. Today's episode is sponsored by Upwork. I don't need a script to tell you how much Upwork has helped my business. I've been using Upwork for over a decade, and it's the easiest way to find top talent to grow your business. From software development to AI implementation to marketing, design, and business operations. You can browse profiles, review past work, and get help scoping the role so you can hire with confidence and get started quickly. With Business Plus, you can access the top 1% of talent on Upwork.

• 8:08Speaker 00

  With over 170,000 freelancers holding five-star ratings, you can hire with the confidence that comes from hiring someone with a verified track record. I've hired engineers, customer service agents, marketers, copywriters, all on Upwork that helped grow my business from the moment they got hired. The best thing is, it's free to sign up, and posting a job is easy. Visit upwork.com right now and post your job for free. That is upwork.com to connect with top talent ready to help your business grow. That's U-P-W-R-K dot com, upwork.com.

• 8:46Speaker 00

  The third business model has a very good success rate and that's up to 60% success rate and that's digital products, courses, templates and guides. This is where it gets exciting. You can create a product once and sell it many times. But here's the thing, most people don't tell you about this. Courses fail when they're not based on real world demand. Why does this model work? Well, because it's low cost to produce, okay? You have infinite scalability, which means that once you create your thing, your course, your template, once, you're basically just selling logins or delivering that template to them. Also, buyers love learning on demand. They love the fact that, hey, I need to learn this right now, let me buy this thing and I can learn on my own pace. Here's my advice on how to make this business model work.

• 9:31Speaker 00

  Solve one problem that your potential customer has and get them a result fast. Sell them the outcome, not the information. So you're going to sell what their life is like afterwards, what their business is like afterwards, not how many videos or how many pitches are in the workbook. That doesn't really matter, actually. In fact, if you could get them to get that skill or get the result without any work or any workbooks or any videos, that would be even better. So the actual number of modules and videos is kind of irrelevant. Really what you're selling is a result. A real example is my program called the $100 MBA. Our students take it because they're kind of tired of side hustling or thinking about

• 10:14Speaker 00

  starting a business and they wanted to get started. And our program allows them to have the skills to not only get started, but grow and scale their business to a million dollars. So as you can see, it's all about the results, it's all about the tools and what they're going to get for what they sign up for. Business model number four, memberships and subscriptions now are up to 70 to 80% success rate. You create content or offer a service on an ongoing basis, giving you recurring revenue and people pay you monthly or yearly to stay in. Think community memberships, think newsletter subscriptions, think content vaults and tool libraries. So why does this work? Well, again, recurring revenue means predictable revenue. Customers become loyal and long-term buyers.

• 10:58Speaker 00

  Also, the barrier of entry is less because they're not buying the whole thing upfront, like lifetime access to the course. And it's easy to upsell, cross-sell, and grow with this model. So my advice to make this work is nail your onboarding. Deliver value from week one because retention is the key to success in this type of business. You want to make sure your customers are happy and they don't have buyer's remorse and they stay customers. Remember, if you have a monthly recurring type of bill that they get, you have to win them over every single month. You're like selling the program every single month and making sure they get value. In this model, having a community and having connection is really important. So it's not just about the content, it's about the community build around the content.

• 11:42Speaker 00

  And then lastly, retain members with monthly wins and feedback loops. So you want to make sure the members know that this works, that they're actually getting something out of it and other people are winning with this community. So you want to give shout-outs, you want to praise your members. Make sure that you highlight the wins that they're all having. For example, Student Mind runs a paid community for Etsy sellers at $29 a month. She has 700 members now and what started as just a side hustle is now her full-time income. All right, business model number five, SaaS. Bootstrapped and niche is what I recommend and this has an 80% success rate. Now you'll notice that this is the top one and it's the one that's going to cost you the most time and money.

• 12:27Speaker 00

  And because of that investment, you actually buy a high success rate. Now we're talking long game. Software as a service is hard. I'm going to tell you firsthand, I built a software company myself, Webinar Ninja, built to 30,000 users, got acquired. I've been through the whole journey. But when you bootstrap a business and you are focused on a niche, it has some of the highest success rates in online business and I'm going to tell you why. Because SaaS revenue is reoccurring, it's sticky, it's based on delivering value, not time, and SaaS becomes an indispensable tool for a business for somebody's life.

• 13:05Speaker 00

  And it just becomes something that they rely on. And therefore, every new customer you get, you get new recurring revenue, growing your wealth in the business. So why does this work? Customers don't churn if you solve a real pain. If you have a real pain and you do it right, it's very hard to lose a customer. It's also very high margins. And the margins get even higher the more customers you have. And of course, exit potential is huge. If you want to build real wealth in your life, meaning you want to create an asset like a business and software has a really good potential for building an asset because software businesses sell at a very high multiple, you could potentially sell this business at some point and really not have to work for a very long time.

• 13:50Speaker 00

  But only one done smart. This is my advice when it comes to this type of business which I'm very acquainted with. Number one, make sure you validate your idea because you want to make sure you're solving a problem that's very painful. Don't build it first. Validate its concept first and see if you could pre-sell the product before you actually build it. Next, try to focus on a very specific audience. Don't try to care to everybody like Spotify. I actually recommend B2B products in SaaS rather than B2C or business to customer. Next, when you're getting started, build slowly and build properly so that you don't have what's called tech debt. Tech debt is when you build very fast and you make mistakes and then that bites you in the rear end later on and creates bugs and creates a slow program

• 14:34Speaker 00

  or a slow experience for your customers. Build properly, even if it means slowly in the beginning, and make sure you continue to earn the trust of your customers by having a high-quality experience, even if it's a simple experience. Like I mentioned, I have an extensive amount of experience with this, building my software company with our Ninja. I pre-sold my software with a landing page, sold 250 beta spots before I wrote a single line of code. That was the green light to build the product and gave me the cash to hire a developer. That's how you launch a SaaS without raising money or going broke and also not building the wrong thing, validating first. So which should you start? Well, here's the key. Start with what gives you Gives you momentum and early wins. Use it to fund the next stage.

• 15:19Speaker 00

  You could start one of these businesses, make some money, and then start a different type of business. And that's just part of your business journey. If you're starting from scratch, start with freelancing or productized service. Make some cash. Have a business on your hands. Learn some lessons on how to run a business. Then roll those profits into a digital product or a membership, and then even a SaaS once you know your audience better. Here's the truth. I've seen it again and again. It's not about the model. It's about you. Any of these businesses can work, but only if you do. Stick with one. Commit. Don't dabble. If you build trust, offer real value, and improve a little bit every single month, you'll be shocked how far you'll go in a year.

• 16:04Speaker 00

  Thanks for being part of the podcast, being a listener, being a subscriber. If you made it this far, that means you're a doer. You're a completionist. You're my kind of person. 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.

• 16:48Speaker 01

  Does it feel like it's getting really hard to figure out the best way to save for retirement? Fidelity can help you find clarity so you can save the best way for you. With a free personalized plan, goal tracking, and timely insights, you'll be set to take on retirement your way. Get started at fidelity.com/future. Expenses charged by your investments and other costs and fees associated with trading or transacting in your account apply. Fidelity Brokerage Services, member NYSE, SIPC.