How To Make Your First Million Dollars In One Year Without Getting Lucky (No Matter Your Circumstances)

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0:35After all, you listen to this show. See terms at discover.com slash credit card. In 2012, I was a school teacher living paycheck to paycheck. 12 years later, in 2024, I sold my business for life-changing money. But it wasn't because I worked harder and it wasn't because I got lucky. It was because I finally learned the math. Most people never make a million dollars because they're breaking the fundamental laws of the marketplace. Today, I'm going to give you three rules I use to scale Webinar Ninja to 30 ,000 customers and millions in revenue. Follow them and you will succeed. It's inevitable, no matter what your circumstances are.

1:19Welcome back to the$100 MBA show. I'm your host, Omar Zen home where I deliver practical business lessons three times a week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to help you start, grow, and scale your business. 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. Rule number one, offer something valuable.

1:58I was living paycheck to paycheck in my teaching job, not because I wasn't working hard. I was working my tail off. I was working from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. every day. In the evenings, I was grading papers at home. I was spending my weekends taking students on field trips. I was getting paid peanuts for all that hard work because what I offered was just not that valuable to the marketplace. Now, you might say to yourself, Omar, no, wait, school teachers, they're valuable to society. Yes, in the minds of people, school teachers are respected, but my paycheck proved I was not valuable to the marketplace.

2:34And that is the bottom line. So as a business owner, your first and most important task is to sell something valuable to your customers. For example, with Webinar Ninja, I sold a webinar software to business owners who wanted to use the power of webinars to make more money. That's valuable. They gladly paid for a tool that costs maybe$99 a month or even$399 a month if it made them tens of thousands of dollars every month or even every time they ran a webinar. Think about it. Why do you pay for Netflix or Spotify or Amazon Prime? Because it's valuable to you. It saves you time. It saves you money.

3:14It gives you joy. It's valuable. So if you're having a hard time selling whatever you're selling, the hard and honest truth is it's just not that valuable to your customers. If you want to make a million dollars in a year, that's a short period of time. It has to be easy to sell. Your ideal customers should be rushing, like running to buy your thing. With Webinar Ninja, my software, it was one of the easiest things I ever sold, including selling my Halloween candy that I got for free at 11 years old to my friends at school, right? Webinar Ninja had no complex funnels or sales processes. Customers literally went on the website, signed up for a 14-day trial, got charged after the trial, and they stayed on as customers because it was valuable to them, period.

3:58Here's a dead simple rule to follow. Your income is a reflection of the size of the problems you can solve and how well you can solve them. That's it. Point blank. If you solve big problems, you get big money. Going back to teaching, I was teaching English to students. I taught English as a second language in Dubai. The problem that the students had that I was trying to solve is that they didn't know how to communicate well in English. It's a problem, but it's not a huge problem. It can be solved without me, honestly. Some of my best students had great English skills just by watching Hollywood movies and listening to hip hop.

4:36Also, there are plenty of other people that can teach English, so my value is not so great. Compare that to my business and my product, Webinar Ninja. It solved a big problem. Business owners were not selling enough of their products and services to stay in business or to grow their business. If they don't solve this problem, they're in big trouble. They're willing to pay because the problem is super big. It's super painful and it's urgent. The marketplace does not care about your title, your experience, or even your charm. It cares about your usefulness. Rule number two, you must become more valuable.

5:14A million dollars in your bank account in one year is exceptional. So you must become an exceptional person that is able to create value in the marketplace. You get it? The only way to create something valuable is if you become more valuable. Where else is the value going to come from? It has to come from you. The best thing I did when I was in my teaching job is I took some advice from Jim Rohn. And here it is. Learn to work harder on yourself than you do on your job. He said if you work hard on your job, you'll make a living. If you work hard on yourself, you can make a fortune. So the most reliable way to earn more money is for you to become more valuable.

6:00You, you are the greatest asset in your business. Invest in yourself and you'll be able to create valuable products to sell. To create my business Webinar Ninja, I had to learn a few things. I had to increase my value. I had to learn how to be an above average communicator and gain some basic sales skills so that I can pre-sell Webinar Ninja to get my seed money from my first customers. I had to learn basic finance and economics to make sure my business was profitable. I learned basic coding so I can learn at least how to evaluate my first developer when they created the first beta version of the software.

6:34I read books. I went to conferences. I took online courses all while I was still in my job so that I can become more valuable. The bottom line is that you get paid for how much value you offer the world. If you want to get paid more, become more valuable so that you can create more valuable things for the marketplace. Now, I'm saying this because this is something you're going to continue to do. You're going to continue to do this throughout your career so that you can make more and more money and increase the value of your business. Today's episode is sponsored by iXL. Summer is a great opportunity for kids to review challenging concepts, strengthen core skills, and head into the fall feeling more prepared.

7:17iExcel is an award-winning online learning platform that helps kids truly understand what they're learning, whether they're building math confidence, strengthening reading and writing skills, or reviewing science concepts. iExcel is used in 96 of the top 100 school districts in the U.S. And studies show kids who use iExcel score higher on tests, proven in all 50 states. As a former school teacher, I can tell you firsthand when kids come back from summer holiday, they're a bit rusty. but it doesn't have to be that way. Your kid could be ready to go and have that advantage with just a few minutes a day using iXL.

7:54Make an impact on your child's learning. Get iXL now. And the$100 MBA show listeners can get an exclusive 20 % off iXL membership when they sign up today at iXL.com slash MBA. Visit iXL.com slash MBA to get the most effective learning program out there at the best price. If you're selling online or out of a storefront, full-time or as a side hustle, you already know the challenge. You're hoping for people to find your listing or waiting for them to walk in. Lucky for you, there's Whatnot, one of our proud sponsors. Whatnot flips that. On Whatnot, you go live and sell directly to people in real time.

8:34I'm a huge fan of live video. As you know, we built and sold a webinar software for over 10 years. The great thing about live video is that they see what you've got. they can ask questions and buy. And they keep coming back. Anyone can sell, whether your business is big, small, or yet to even exist. People selling on Whatnot sell 10 times more than on other major marketplaces. That's because they're not just listing products, you're building real connections with buyers. I'm a big fan of Whatnot, a big user of Whatnot. I've bought products on Whatnot because it's a lot of fun, actually. You get to interact with the seller, as well as the fact that you get a great deal.

9:12It's super easy to use. It's intuitive, which means your buyers are going to find it easy to buy. Download the Whatnot app today and get free shipping on your first order. Just search W-H-A-T-N-O-T, Whatnot, in the App Store and start scoring amazing deals. Rule number three, obsess about profit margins. Margins are not the most important thing. They are everything. Margins is how much you make in your business after expenses. It's the money you keep. It's the money that you get to have in your bank account. The fatter the margins, the more you keep. So if you want to make a million dollars in one year and your margins are 25%, not that fat, you need to make$4 million in revenue to make $1 million in profit.

10:03Making$4 million in revenue in your first year is no easy feat. Let me do some quick maths for you. If your average customer spends$1 ,000 a year with you, you need 4 ,000 customers to make$4 million in revenue. Remember, we need$4 million in revenue to make$1 million in profit. So 4 ,000 customers is what you would need. That's a lot of customers, especially just in one year. But let's say your margins were 80 % instead of 25%. By the way, those are typical margins for a business like mine, a SaaS business webinar ninja. You'd only need to make$1 ,250 ,000 to make a million dollars in profit because your margins are 80%, which means if your average customer spends$1 ,000 a year with you, you would only need 1 ,250 customers instead of 4 ,000 customers.

10:50That's a lot more doable in one year, especially if you're selling a high value product. You could play with two levers to work out how many customers you need. The first lever is margins, which is really a strong lever. And number two is how much you earn in revenue per customer per year. Even a small increase in margins allow you to really gain a lot more money and profit. And quick tip, the higher the both are, the margins and how much revenue you get from a customer each year, the less customers you need, the easier it will be to make a million dollars in a year. Now, the cheat code to all of this, again, is rule number one.

11:30Offer something valuable. That's why it's rule number one. When it's valuable, it's easy to sell and it's easier for you to hit those goals. If this episode resonates with you and you're ready to be more valuable so you can create something valuable, make sure you subscribe because we have an upcoming episode you don't want to miss called Can You Build a software business with AI in just seven days. I can't wait to share it with you. I also want to add, you don't need luck to do any of these three things every day. Offer something valuable. Work on increasing the value of your product. Number two, invest in yourself so you can do number one and recruit other people in your team to increase your value and to continue to improve your product.

12:10It's going to come from you, right? Number three, increase your profit margins. If you do all three, you have the best chance, the best chance of making a million dollars in a year. I know this because I did it over and over in my businesses, including this one, my media company and podcast. Now, every time I didn't hit a million dollars is because I didn't follow one of these three rules. Now, this approach works no matter what your situation is, no matter your circumstance. I know because I've been through it all. OK, it doesn't matter if you're in a bad economy, if you're in a good economy, doesn't matter if you're in a full time job or you have no job, if you have kids, no kids, a busy schedule, or you have limited time because you always control who you are becoming.

12:52You might not control your boss. You might not control your industry. You might not control the market. You might not control the algorithm, but you do control what you learn, what you practice regularly, what skills you stack within you, how valuable you become. That's leverage no one can take from you. Get this. I sold WebInternation, my software company, but I get to take with me all the skills and who I became in the process. That doesn't go with the sale. I get to keep that. And I get to keep the money from the sale, of course. Can't forget that. But I got to warn you, there's a trap that keeps people stuck.

13:28People wait for more money before they invest in themselves. No, you have it flipped. Here's the order. Become more, you'll be able to deliver more, and therefore you will earn more. That's where the money's going to come from when you become more. It's not the other way around. Every real income jump I've ever had in my life happened because I leveled up. It happened after I leveled up, not before. Even now, I want to take my company from seven figures to eight figures in profit. And I'm investing in myself and feeling quite uncomfortable because I know that's what I need to do so I can become more valuable to make more money.

14:06And by the way, you can exchange money with impact and And you'll get the same result because the more valuable you are, the more impact you will make, which will equal more money. That's just the laws of the marketplace. So before I go, I want to leave you with this. If you want to earn more money, stop asking yourself, what should I do? Start asking, who do I need to become? Who do I need to become to be able to pull off what I want to accomplish? because the honest truth is, is that if you were that person already, you would have accomplished what you wanted to accomplish by now. So say, for example, you want to make a million dollars in a year, but right now you're only making$70 ,000 a year.

14:47You need to become the person that can pull off that million dollar mark. Otherwise you would be a millionaire by now if you were that person. So you have to become that person. You have to transform. You have to do things and learn and increase your value. And that's the truth that no one is telling you. And I need to tell it to you because that's my job, okay? That's my job to just give it to you straight. Just think about it. If you're in a job right now and you're working and you're getting paid a salary, would you be able to do that job when you were four years old? No, because you don't have the skills as a four-year-old to be able to do that job.

15:21You gained those skills and became more valuable. And therefore, you got that job and are getting paid equivalent to that value. Now, you can earn more and you can build something great. but it's going to require you to become more valuable again. If this episode connected with you, I highly recommend you check out a previous episode that we published called Three Businesses You Can Start With No Money Up Front. Does your bank balance induce self-imposed embarrassment? No worries, I've been there and I have your back. That episode will show you three profitable businesses you can start today with zero capital.

15:57No investors needed, just you and your willingness to make it happen. So check it out. 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.

16:30And now that you've subscribed, I'll check you in the next episode.

17:00where you left them. Investing involves risk, including risk of loss. Fidelity Brokerage Services, LLC member NYSE SIPC.