Are you creating enough profit in your business? 

I get questions all the time about how to increase profit in your business. Even established online course creators or coaches wonder this same thing, and, to be honest, it’s kind of a loaded question. 

So in this episode of the Art of Online Business, I want to share with you 8 different ways that you can increase your profit in your business. Not every way will be relevant to each online business—it really depends on what type of business you have—but regardless, with all of the economic uncertainty going around right now, this is something that everyone is looking for help with. 

It’s about setting your business up for financial success so that you can ride out the downturns in the economy and take advantage when times are going well. These things are the foundation of what I’m sharing today. 

By taking some of these tips and implementing them into your business, you should be able to increase your profits in ways that you may not have expected. 

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• The foundations of setting your business up for financial success
• How to calculate your profit margins
• Tips for reviewing your expenses and ROI
• Why your team is your biggest source of leverage
• How to save money by bundling your products and services
• Why fulfillment is your most important system
• Tweaks you can make to your sales process that can increase conversion
• Why it might be time to increase your prices
• Tips for bringing more people into your business

Links & Resources:

• The Art of Online Business website
• DM me on Instagram
• Visit my YouTube channel
• The Art of Online Business clips on YouTube
• Full episodes of The Art of Online Business Podcast on YouTube
• The Art of Online Business Podcast website
• Check out my Accelerator coaching program

*Disclosure: I only recommend products I use and love and all opinions expressed here are my own. This post may contain affiliate links that at no additional cost to you, I may earn a small commission.

Got A Question You Want Answered On the Podcast?

Ask your questions or let me know if there is a topic or guest you’d like to hear from in the comments below or click here to visit my contact page and submit your question there for a chance to be featured on one of my upcoming Q&A episodes.

Please support the podcast by giving an honest Rating/Review for the show on iTunes!

Other Episodes You’ll Enjoy:

Why I Shut Down a $750K Revenue Stream

Can a $600K Business Really Be As Simple As This? with Judy Woods

How to Get More People to Consume Your Content (and Increase Accessibility)

Hey, my friend, welcome to the Art of Online Business Podcast. My name is Rick Mulwray and I’m an online business coach. I’m an ads expert, and most importantly, I’m a dad. And this show is where we help established online course creators and coaches create more profit, more impact with less hustle. All right, let’s get into it. What is up, my friends? Welcome back to the Art of Online Business Podcast. This is episode number 626. And today I want to continue this whole conversation around money and finances. And today, specifically, I want to talk about profit. So one question I get all the time from people, and especially when people join our accelerator coaching program right off the bat, they say, you know, how do I increase my profit in my online business? And these are established online course creators and coaches and, you know, maybe they have a membership program or what have you. And so it’s kind of a loaded question, right? So I’ll explain what I mean by that in just a second. And I do I want to share with you eight ideas, eight different ways for you to increase profit in your online business. And all eight ways that I’m going to share with you here today are not relevant to everybody, because it really depends on what type of business that you have, what type of offers that you have, etc.. And, you know, look, we’re in as I record this, it’s the middle of August 2022 and we’re in a ton of economic uncertainty.

Again, a time recording this. The you know, the numbers for July just came out from an inflationary perspective and they weren’t as bad as as was being expected. So that’s good news right now. And I also I’m also getting a lot of questions and we just actually talked about this on a group coaching call earlier this week. This is really setting your setting your business up for for financial success, to ride out downturns in the economy and also to take advantage of, if you will, when things are going really, really strongly. This is all foundational, basic business principles, right. And setting yourself up for success where I’m talking about things like having an emergency fund for your business, or we might call it like a runway for your business. How long you want that to be? Some people say three months. Other people say 3 to 6 months. You might you know, this is not this is not financial advice. It’s whatever you’re comfortable with. Right. And then we’re talking about an emergency fund and that sort of thing to make sure that your family is set. The other thing, too, is really listening to your customers, listening to your audience. What are they going through right now? What are they what are they needing right now? Are there other things that you can provide that align still with your values, etc.? And so this is sort of like the foundation of the conversation here today. 

And if you don’t have these basic business principles established as far as savings or you want to make sure that your team is taken care of, etc., you know, again, one question I get a lot is how do I increase my profit margin? How do I increase profit in the business? And I’ll tell you for my business early on and I say for the first say I would say for the honestly, for the first five years of the business, I’m kind of embarrassed to say that it was that long. And, you know, here we are again in August of 2022. It’s it’s a little over eight months now, eight months. I don’t know why I said eight months, a little over eight and a half years. Big difference there from eight and a half months. And so, yeah, about five years in the business. I wasn’t really to be completely honest with you, I wasn’t really looking at I was looking at profit margin, but I don’t think I really understood it. And it sounds funny to say it’s like, Well, what don’t you understand about it, Rick? It’s like the the money, you know, it’s expenses divided by monthly revenue. That’s the easiest way to look at it, right? There’s different ways to look at it, like net profit margin, gross profit margin, gross profit margin, you know, take into account cost of goods sold and all that stuff.

Right. The way I want to talk about it here today is in the simplest form is what are your monthly expenses divided by your monthly revenue? Oc and the New Times up by 100. You subtract it by 100. So just for super simple purposes. Right. And I’m just going to get my calculator because I am right now. Today, this week, my daughter is home from preschool. So it’s a lot of child care this week. So let’s just say our monthly expenses our monthly expenses are 20,000. Right. And let’s just say that our monthly revenue this is going to be super simple, right? Is 40,000. So that’s 0.5 times. 100 is 50%. And you would subtract that from 100% to get your profit margin. Right. So in this case here, in this super simple example, your profit margin is 50%. That’s what, again, in this simplest terms that we’re talking about here today. And so if you were looking to increase your profit margin, the first thing you have to do is what is your current profit margin? You need to know what your what your baseline is so that you can then look at, all right, this is where I’m starting. Where do I want to go? Now, one question I get all the time too, along these lines is like, what’s a good profit margin? And that’s got to be different for for everybody. You know, depending on what type of business that you have. So just as an example, like an e-comm business with products and all that stuff is going to have a much lower profit margin than, say, a course creator business because there’s no products, you know, like physical products and that sort of thing. 

Generally, generally. And I’m not giving financial advice, remember, but in general, I want to see at least a 40% profit margin. Now, here’s the thing to remember to. You might be in a growing season if you are. I always I never like when people use the word season like I’m at this season in your life or this season in your business. Well, what does that mean, right? This is it being a week? Does it mean like a month? Does it mean a year? I don’t know. It’s just this period of time, whatever. But, you know, if you are in a let’s just say you’re in a year of growing, meaning you’re investing more in your business with the hopes of reaping the rewards of your investing in the business the next year, while your profit margin is very likely going to be lower in that growth period. Right. And hopefully your profit margin will be higher the next year because now you’re starting to see the benefits of when you invested in when you were growing into your business. A great example of this. Let’s just say that you create a website or you have somebody create a website for you and you pay just as a super simple number, 10,000, right? Hopefully you’re not paying that much, but you pay $10,000 for a website. 

By the way, side note, you do not need a fancy website to have a very successful business. I had the worst website in the world for many, many years and the business did just fine in the process. But anyway, let’s just say you spend $10,000 and that is spread out over, say, whatever, three months. What during that project? Well, that’s a $10,000 investment that hopefully. Right. You’re investing in the business. So your profit margin is going to go down very likely during those three months where you’re paying out the ten grand versus next year, where you don’t have to pay out ten grand for a new website and you’re reaping the rewards from the brand new website. Right? So it really all depends on one. Another example is I remember a conversation with one of our older members several months ago now, and they were investing, they were going through a lot of this in their business where they were creating a brand new program and they were putting a lot of investment in it because they knew it was going to sell. Right. This is a very established business and it was a year’s worth of investing in growing, in growth, in creating this program. So, you know, it goes without saying that the profit margin is I shouldn’t say it goes without saying, but the profit margin is going to take a hit during that year of investing and building this program until it’s ready to be sold. 

Let’s just say, you know, later on that year or early the next year. Well, at that point, then you should be hopefully reaping the rewards of the investing and growing in your business over the you know, over the previous 12 months. Right. So lower profit margin during that time where you’re investing in and growing the business versus a higher profit margin when you’re hopefully seeing the results and the rewards, if you will, from the previous investment. So higher profit margin at that point, I just want to make that distinction because it’s actually really, really important to understand where what’s going on in the business, what you’re investing in, etc.. Okay, so first thing you need a baseline. What is your current profit margin? Again, just in the very simplest terms, right, monthly expenses divided by your monthly revenue times 100. And then you take that number and you say 100 minus that number, that’s your profit margin. Okay, so that’s number one. So number two, the most straightforward thing that you can do and this is what most people think about when wanting to increase profit. Right, is to review your expenses in your business. Right. It’s super. Super should be the first thing, the simplest lowest hanging fruit. Got to get that into an episode here. Lowest hanging fruit. Have a love hate relationship with that phrase, but it’s super effective in describing what we’re talking about right now. 

You know, look, you should be doing this every month in your business with a with a pal that you get from your bookkeeper. But so many course creators and coaches don’t look at their numbers on a consistent basis or don’t even get a pal from their bookkeeper, which is not which is a travesty, honestly. Right. You got to be looking at your numbers. At the very least, you should be reviewing your tools and your reoccurring payments every single quarter so you can look at, oh, we haven’t used this tool in six months now. 

Why am I still paying $40 a month for it or what? Have you. So you’ve got to be reviewing your numbers each and every month. In the very least, what I would do on a quarterly basis is to be reviewing your tools and the reoccurring payments that you’re making in your business. Right. By the way, there’s a really cool website that somebody told me about a few months ago. I’d never even heard of it. It’s called huddled h you d l e d. I have zero affiliation with them. But basically you hook up huddled with like your QuickBooks or whatever you’re doing your your bookkeeping with, and it allows you to track and manage your, your SAS subscriptions, your, your software subscriptions in one platform. And it will do analysis for you and it will remind you when things are are up for renewal, have you and it will find you the best deals.

So if you currently with if you’re currently with a specific tool and then there’s a brand new deal that comes up with that tool that you might be eligible for, it’ll tell you about that. I don’t remember how much it is, but it was I checked it out was really, really cool. So we’re going to start to use that in our business again. It was huddled. Huddled again. They are not a sponsor or I’m not an affiliate. Somebody just told me about that a few months ago. I thought it was really cool. And so with that, as you’re going through the numbers in your business, your pal, and especially in the economic climate that we find ourselves in, right. And looking at your pal and your expenses, you want to make sure that there’s an ROI on every line item of your expenses. So everything that you’re paying out in the business, you want to make sure there’s an ROI. And I like to look at three different types of ROI. Now, oftentimes you’re not going to get all three of these different types of ROI for 411 expense, if you will. But you want at least one of these areas of of return, right? So the most obvious one is financial, right? So are you getting a a revenue return? Are you getting a monetary return? That’s one thing, one option, if you will, for getting an ROI. 

The other option is time. Are you getting your time back? So, for example, if you hire a VA for 10 hours a week and what they’re doing is very hard to map back to a financial return, but they’re taking a whole bunch of things off of your plate. Okay, cool. Well, you’re getting a time. There’s a there’s a there’s an ROI of time there. You’re getting 10 hours a week back and off of your plate so that you can focus on other things like higher leverage activities, activities, spending more time with your family, whatever it might be. So there’s a time ROI. And the third ROI I like to look at is sort of your energy and stress. And this really closely coincides with that time aspect, right? So are you getting an ROI of saving your energy or getting your energy back or less stress in your business? So I look at those three different areas financial time and energy stress as positive or wise. Now, if you have anything on your pal for your during the listing out your line items of your expenses that do not have an ROI of one of those things. I would really look at that and question whether you need to be spending on whatever that is. Right. And you want again, you want to be going through this regularly. If you haven’t done this recently. Absolutely. I’d recommend going through and doing that. 

And and look, there’s obviously a bunch of different ways to get help in your business. Right. And your team is your greatest source of leverage in the business. They’re going to give you the most time back. They’re going to give you the most ROI in one or more of the areas that I just talked about. So that’s leverage for you. It’s also for almost everybody that I talk to, myself included, right? The team, your team is going to be your biggest expense. But it can and that can that expense can vary greatly. And I want to put quotes around expense because hopefully this is more of looking at an investment because you’re getting an ROI on the money that you spend on your team each and every month. Now here’s the thing. If you’re not getting an ROI, that is either financial time or energy and stress or more than one of those from individual team members, then you need to look at that specifically. Right. I’m actually going through this exercise right now as we speak with one of our accelerator members where they’re spending quite a bit on their team, but yet their revenue is really dipping. So one of the first areas that we’re looking at is like, okay, what is this person doing? How much are they making per month? How many hours? What are they responsible for? What are their like? What results are they responsible for? What are they owning in the business, etc.? You want to make sure that there is an ROI from each and every person on your team because again, it’s going to be your biggest expense. 

And also this can vary greatly. Yes. But, you know, I like to look at no more of this. Another question, and you could ask a whole bunch of different people and get different answers here. This is how I like to look at it. This is how I work with my bookkeeper, who is my de facto CFO. And I like to look at no more than 25 to 30% of your monthly expenses being on Team OC. And so if we’re getting above that, if we’re like 50% of my monthly expenses is team. All right. Is that necessary? Maybe it is. Maybe it isn’t. But you really want to be looking at that. Right. And so, again, you’re looking at all the line items on your expenses, on your pal, ensuring there is an ROI. The other thing that in terms of looking at your line item expenses on your pal to as a way of increasing profit, the other thing a lot of people don’t realize is that if you’re processing if you use Stripe, right, if you’re processing, at least I think the number is I haven’t reached out to him to recently, but I’m about to if you’re processing at least 100 K per month for a certain number of months in a row, I’m not sure what it is right now. 

You can renegotiate that processing fee. A lot of people don’t don’t know that you can reach out and whatever payment process that you’re doing, it doesn’t hurt. The worst thing. The worst thing they’re going to say is no. But if you’re at, say, a 3% payment processing fee percentage and you’re able to negotiate that that down to just as a number, whatever, 1.5%. Right. Well, you’ve just dropped that processing fee by 50%. That’s a lot. And that adds up. So that’s another line item that you’ll see on your expenses that it’s like, well, you know, there’s what’s the ROI there? Well, there’s no ROI there, but it is a cost of doing business. And it does mean that the higher the processing fees will or the amount that you’re paying each month means that you’re making more money. Right. But let’s see if we can negotiate that percentage down. But you do have to be at a certain level of monthly income to be able to do that with some of these companies. So also speaking of profit. Right. Are you looking at and we haven’t even this is still number. What are we still number two, right. Yeah, we’re still a number two because this is looking at your pal, looking at the numbers from a line item perspective. Right. And so one another area when it comes to profit margin that you will see on your pal is and most people do not look at this but I want you to start today if you haven’t been and do you know what it costs you to fulfill on your offers? So if you have a coaching program, let’s just say you’ve got a group coaching program and you’re charging whatever the number is and you’re making this whatever.

Let’s just say you’re making 50,000 a month from that group coaching program. Well, do you know how much it cost to fulfill on that program every single month? Right. What are all the costs involved in fulfilling on that program each and every month, from your team to your systems to whatever it might be? Most people do not look at that, and this is a really simple way to start to break down. Oh, do I need to, you know, charge more money? Do I need to offer less? Do I need to, you know, whatever it might be? But you can’t make those decisions until you understand what the profit margin is to fulfill on an offer of offers in your business. Right. And so two ways to think about increasing that profit margin when it comes to fulfilling on your offer is you can increase your price, right. Or your prices and depending on how many offers, that’s an easy one. Right? Or you can do things like bundling high margin offers, like let’s just say you’ve got a course and you know, the margin on that is like 90%, let’s just say. 

So what if you took a few of your courses, for example, and bundle them together? They all have high margin and you charge a price that’s lower than the total cost of the number of the products in the bundle. Right. So just again, simplicity’s sake, let’s just say each course is $100 and you bundle three of them together. If I were to buy them individually, it’s $300. Well, what if you charged? What if you sold it for 247 or something like that? Right. And so you’re making more money off of that when again, you really want to you’d want to look at the numbers and all that stuff to make this decision. But, you know, as opposed to one or people buying one course for $100, now you’re increasing that cart value, if you will, or the purchase order purchase value from 102 up to $247. So that’s just an idea, right? The bottom line here is I want you thinking about what does it cost me to fulfill on my offers, what is the profit margin there? And then backing up from what I was talking about earlier, really looking at line by line on your profit loss statement, is there an ROI, whether it’s financial, whether it’s time, whether it’s stress or energy that you’re getting back or less stress and energy, less stress, higher energy, that sort of thing. Right. So that is number two. That’s a big number to. Number number three. 

And again, this is a super obvious one, but a lot of people don’t. They miss it. Right. And that is, are you collecting on any unpaid, overdue debts? These are just simple things right in front of you. So if somebody is, you know, maybe they had a net 30 to pay you on something. There’s an invoice out. And you are, you know, let’s just say it’s 60 days past due. Well, if that person owes you or that company owes you $10,000, well, we’ve got to get collecting that right. We’ve got to get that cash back in the house, if you will. And so do you have any unpaid, overdue debts? And if you do, it’s time to collect them. If you don’t. Okay. Not an issue. But again, it’s a super simple thing that a lot of people overlook. And so these are just very simple, basic principles and things to be looking at in your business to increase profit margin, write our increased profit and lower your expenses that are right in front of you. And these are the things that most of us go to first when we are trying to answer the question, how do I increase my profit? But you can only cut costs so much, right? You can’t cut more than 100% because then there’s nothing to to gain after that. Right. So then this is where we shift into the revenue side of generating more revenue. And the first thing I like to look at is the different systems in our business, right? I’ve talked about it here in the on the podcast a lot before. 

So I like to look at an online business in four systems, right? You got your marketing system. So how you attract your ideal audience to your business, you’ve got your sales system. How do you quote unquote, convert those people into sales? Right. They purchase from you. Then you’ve got your operations system and then you’ve got your fulfillment system. So your marketing, your sales, is everything up to the sale fulfillment? That system is what happens when somebody becomes a paying customer, right? Then what does that look like? And your operations system is this are the systems and processes, including your team, to support those other three systems in your business. Now in June, we had our first in-person retreat for accelerator in over two and a half years. The last retreat that we did was, I believe it was March. 10th and 11th, I think it was or 11th and 12th it was literally the the Thursday and Friday of March in March 2020. And that weekend I remember that Sunday. All hell broke loose with with COVID. And so that’s a different story for a different time. But anyway, so we were at this our Vegas retreat, and I was talking about this one exact principle that I want to be talking about here right now. And so I had members of my team come up to the front of the room and they each had one of those big pieces of Post-it pad paper, you know, like the really big pieces. 

And I had them write on each one. So one person had fulfillment, one person had sales, one person had marketing, one person had operations. And so I asked the rest of the group, I said, all right, I want you to put put these people in order based on what’s on their Post-it piece of paper for the importance of the business. Like what is the business hinge on which one of these systems and people, you know, they said, okay, let’s put sales first. So we put sales and then we’re like, okay, what’s after sales? Then it was like, okay, sales, marketing, fulfillment operations. And then so other people said, Well, wait a minute, wait a minute, no, let’s put marketing first because we’ve got to attract people so that we can sell them. Okay, let’s flip that around. Let’s put marketing and sales. And then finally somebody said, wait a minute, wait a minute. We got to put fulfillment first. And then I was like, ding, ding, ding. Absolutely right. Fulfillment, my friend, is your most important system in your business. And that is an amazing opportunity to increase profit. Can you increase profit in sales and stuff? Absolutely. And we’ll talk about that here in just a minute. But fulfillment is the often overlooked part of your business where you can drastically increase your profit margin.

Right. Because when you’re doing it right, it’s costing you less to do marketing. Right. This fulfillment is the most important system in your business. In my book, and this is what I teach in whenever I’m coaching people right now. Let me let me describe let me explain why I say that. So number one, right. You what kind of what kind of success? I want you to think about this. What kind of success are you ensuring people in your program or programs that they get? What kind of success are you ensuring that they get? Are you asking 

your students or your members or your clients, whatever it is? How do you define success in this program? How will you define success in this program? And how are you delivering on that? This sounds so obvious. Well, it’s like. Of course I am, Rick. Well, that’s why I do what I do. Well, are you. You know if you have a course, you’re I can guarantee you that your completion rate. I should say. Guarantee you, but. Most often the completion rate of your course, and it was for mine to write when I had courses, it was it’s super low. It’s like 15%. That’s terrible. That’s like industry average. What more can you be doing there to serve your clients to ensure that they’re getting the results they’re coming in for now? Granted, we can only do so much, right? It’s the whole. 

We can lead a horse to water. We can’t make them drink. No, I’m not comparing a horse. People, students to horses. You know what? You know what I’m talking about. Like we can give them all of the best coaching, all the best material, all the best training and learning and so forth. But we just can’t make them do the work, right? That’s up to them. But have we taken the time to understand how they define success in your program? And then are you delivering on that? Because when you start doing that, they’re going to they’re going to start telling other people right there, start getting they’re going to start getting success. Are the people going to say, wait, what’s going on over here? What are you doing over here to see so much success? And they say, oh, you know, I went to so and-so’s program where I, you know, I’ve been coaching with this person for so long or I’ve been in this this mastermind or whatever it might be. Right. And so this is such an overlooked thing, but yet so obvious. And a lot of this comes from getting regular feedback from your students, from your members, from your clients or whatever, you know, what type of business that you have. Have a system for a feedback loop. With your course, with your membership, with your clients or mastermind members. Do you have a system in place to get regular feedback from them? Yes, I am saying listen to your members and take that feedback in, even if it’s negative. 

Because the idea there is, number one, you want your students or your coaching clients or whatever to feel like they’re being heard. Everybody wants to, you know, feel like they’re being heard. This is no different. I know so many people who run programs that they’re like, this is how I’m doing it, right? And it’s like, Hey, you bought it. This is what it is. Well, I just think that’s so shortsighted, right? We’re here to serve. We’re here to get people results. And so a big piece of that is, are you actively seeking feedback and then listening, taking that feedback and then using it to make improvements where it makes sense as long as it aligns with your values, etc.? This. This is all fulfillment because when you’re getting people results. The marketing takes care of itself, then you get into referrals and all that different types of stuff, right? And so why am I focusing on this so much here in one of the, one of the eight ways to increase profit in your online business is because. I’m not this is not costing me any more any money. Right. I can get as long as I’m getting results for people. That they want coming in. I’m delivering on the results that however they however they define success in the program. Then then sales are going to take care of themselves honestly. One book that I think I’ve mentioned on the podcast, it’s the worst name ever. 

I think it’s called like The Road Less Stupid by Keith Cunningham. I think it is. But he asked the question, How would you run your business? What would you do in your business if 100% of your sales came from referrals? And it’s like, think about that. I love that question. Like, what would you do differently, if anything? How would you run your business if it were just simply 100% referral based business? It’s pretty cool to think about. Right. It’s kind of we’re talking about here is when you focus on fulfillment and getting people results. The rest kind of takes care of it itself. So next thing, number five, fifth way to increase profit. Notice. By the way, I have not even mentioned getting more leads into your business yet. I’ve not even mentioned go pay for ads or anything like that. You might be surprised, but this is these are the types of things we’re looking for leverage points in your business. This is what I help my coaching students do is find leverage in their business. You know, it’s the whole 8020. What are the what are the small levers that we’re going to talk about here in a second? What are the small levers in your business that can wield big results? And so the fifth way is looking at your sales process that you have right now, whether it’s a funnel or whatever it might be. 

And what tweaks can you make to your existing sales process that can increase? Sales conversion, right. That can increase converting quote unquote, leads so people into paying customers. So for example, let’s say you have an evergreen webinar funnel. What? Stats along the funnel. Could you improve? That could have a big impact on revenue. And so for ease of numbers, let’s say you have a a lead sail conversion rate of 10%, which is really good, and you increase that through tweaking parts of the funnel and you increase your lead to sale conversion rate from 10% to 12%. So you’ve increased it by 2%. Well, that 2% increase in lead to sale conversion could also be looked at as increasing your number of funnel leads by 20%. Right, because we increased the lead to sale conversion rate from 10% to 12%, which is a 20% increase. So that 2% increase the difference there. Right, can also be looked at as increasing your number of funnel leads by 20% because you’re actually needing fewer leads to make more sales. Does that make sense? Another example of this. What we’re talking about here, let’s just say you’re doing sales calls, right? You’ve got a higher ticket coaching program and you do sales calls or you’ve got a sales person doing doing sales calls to have people join your program. Right. And let’s say that 50% of the people that you speak with or your team speaks with decide to join your program.

Well, if you were to increase that to 60% by improving the experience on your on your calls for the person that you’re speaking to, for example. Well, that’s another example of increasing the number of people who are raising their hand as it so those leads, if you will. By 20. Right, because you were, quote unquote, close your close rate. I don’t love that term. Close rate was 50%. You increase it by 10%. Right. 10% of 50% is 20%. Does that make sense? And we increase it to 60%. Well, that’s another example of by increasing the number of leads, if you will, by 20%, because you’re actually needing fewer leads to make more sales. It’s kind of a weird one, too, to wrap. You know, as I started to think about this and really it took me a minute to kind of like, oh, okay, boom. Yes, absolutely. Focus on focusing on these small levers within your sales process. Can that can increase your. Your conversion percentage can offer much higher profits without spending any more money. Notice we didn’t spend we haven’t spent any money here yet. We are just tweaking what we’re doing and looking at what’s in front of us, providing a better experience, etc.. And when we do the tweaks, when we optimize, right, so we’re optimizing our funnel, looking at the different steps of our funnel, the sales process. When we make small tweaks, those small tweaks can have big impact, right? And thus we’re converting more into sales and not needing as many new leads coming in because we’re converting more. 

So that’s another way to increase our profit. So the sixth way to increase profit in your online business is you can make more offers to your existing customers. And I want to tell a story. So one of our one of our accelerator members has this amazing membership, and they also have a whole bunch of other courses and mini courses and trainings and recordings of stuff they’ve done in past years and 

so forth that aren’t in the membership. It’s kind of a little bit different, but it’s complementary to what they do in the membership. And this person was like, Yeah, my, my members of the membership, they’ll, they’ll, they purchase anything. They just love everything that we do in the business. And it’s like, Well, are you making offers to those members? And they’re like, No. I’m like, Holy cow, hold on, hold on a second. So let’s do an analysis of all the other offers that you have in the business that are not in the membership. And we could start bundling them together just like we talked about earlier. These are high margin because they are from years past that are still completely relevant and super helpful right now for everybody in their in their membership. And so why not just have an amazing price for a bundle of offers, right? The bundle of courses are recordings are what have you and make those offers to the membership and you can set this up on this can be automated in your email CRM where you set up a funnel or what have you and you’re making these offers and so forth. 

This is another way we’re not paying for. We’re not creating anything new. We’re not paying for more leads, nothing like that. We are simply looking at what we currently have in the business and how can we make additional offers that makes sense right to our existing customers. This is a far overlooked opportunity to increase profit in your business. And yeah, we’re talking like, you know, cross-selling, etc., where it makes sense. All right. The seventh way and this is probably the the way that people that you’re like, wait, why haven’t you mentioned this yet? Well, because we really honestly haven’t needed to do that. You can do this right off the bat and you’ll understand why in a second. But it is to increase your price, whatever it is that you’re selling or whatever. If you’re if you have a bunch of of offers, it might not make sense to increase your price. But I will tell you right now that most every person that I coach with. Can do with increasing your price. And I think accelerator, to be completely honest, is underpriced. And I’m going to talk more about that here in just a second. But you can increase your price if it makes sense, if it feels good to you. 

You know, I have one member of Accelerator who’s like, no, I am not raising my price because this is amazing, right? It’s a values alignment for them. Perfect. Is it undervalued? Absolutely. Could they increase the price? Absolutely. Could they increase profit by doing that? Yes. But we’ve got to get creative because they want to keep the price where it is. Amazing. Okay, cool. What’s the profit margin and delivering on that, fulfilling on that offer, etc.. So number seven is increase your price. Most all of you listening right now can increase your price if it feels good, if it aligns with you, and if it makes sense. Number eight we’re here the at the end here the eighth way to increase profit in your online business. We’ve made it, my friend. Increase the number of people coming into your business, right? Both organically, whether it’s Instagram or Tik Tok or what SEO or what have you, your paid channels, whether it’s Facebook and Instagram ads or Tik Tok ads or podcast ads or whatever it might be. Increase the number of people coming into your business. Well, notice this is this episode. Here is eight ways to increase profit in your online business. This is number eight. Most people think this is should be the first thing that they think of right when they want to increase. Well, I just need more people into the business, but don’t bring more people in your business if your sales process is broken. 

Right. If you’re getting a crappy conversion percentage on on your sales system in your business, well, you don’t want to bring you don’t want to pay for more people coming in your business into a sales process that is not very good. Let’s share those things up first. Right. So seven out of these eight things here. Took no additional money. We did not pay anything additional to increase profit. We were merely looking at what we already had and thinking differently about the business. Once you’ve done all those things, then I would be looking at increasing the number of people coming in to your business, and once you have all these systems kind of humming along, if you will, then you want to be building your list. Building your list. Building your list. Building your list. Okay. Now I have a bonus one here for you for increasing your profit. Be upfront with people about how much your offer or offers cost. I will tell you that people today are tired of being interested in a program and not knowing the price because it’s not listed anywhere. I’ve been very guilty of this, you know, for so many years, a quote unquote higher ticket offer. You wouldn’t put the price on the sales page you had to call or you had to schedule a strategy call or a quote unquote discovery call, whatever that means. Right. And I’ve been guilty of this.

Right currently. Right now, if you go to our accelerator page, Rick WorldCom, forward slash accelerator, there is no price on there. And because it’s the reason of that is because I’ve always subscribed to that for so long. And last year it’s taken me this long to do it. I’m ashamed. I’m I’m embarrassed. I should say that it’s taken me this long, but we are literally in the process right now of redesigning that page. And one of the first things that we’re changing about that page is we’re putting the price of accelerator on, right? Currently, currently, and I’m even considering raising the price, but currently because again, I think it’s undervalued currently it’s 25 K for one year or you can pay in monthly, monthly payments at 2500 for it’s a 12 month program, so it’s 2500 a month or you can pay one pay of of 25 K. So many people. Don’t. Let me know they’re interested in accelerator or apply or email me because the price isn’t on there. And I hear this time and time again, they’re like, Oh, I didn’t even I’d even think I didn’t think I could afford it. Right. And then when they find out because they’re like, Oh, the price has to be super high. It’s with you and the type of coaching and the the all the access that they get to me and in the team and all that stuff. It’s like, Oh, I can never afford that. 

But then so they don’t do anything and then they find out the price. They’re like, Holy cow, I didn’t even, you know, I’ve heard this a lot from people. They’re like, I didn’t apply because I thought the price would be so much higher. Holy cow. Let me apply now. Well, it’s like. All right, well, if I just set the price on the page. We didn’t have a problem. So I want you to think about that. Right. You will make I firmly believe that you will bring in more of the type of people that align with you and your values and your business when you’re up front about your pricing. And when you’re upfront about your pricing and everything’s aligning with your values, you’re bringing more people in to the business. Your profits going to go up because you’re making more sales. So I’ve just given you nine different ways to. Increase profit in your online business. Now, let me rattle through them right now for you again. Number one, you need a oh, that was eight ways, because this first one doesn’t count as a way. You need a baseline. What’s your current profit margin? Monthly expenses. Super simple this way. Monthly expenses divided by monthly revenue, times 100. You take that number and you subtract it from 100. That’s your profit margin. Again, different different ways to look at profit margin. But that’s the simplest way. Number two, do the obvious. Look at your expenses. 

Look at your pal are you are getting an ROI from every expense on your pal, whether it be financial, time, energy or stress. Okay. Your team is going to be your biggest expense. However, that’s also your greatest source of leverage. In your business. If you’re making like six figures a month in revenue consistently, you can call up your payment processor and renegotiate lower a lower percentage. It’s going to save you a ton of money, thus increasing your profit margin. Be looking at the profit margin for what it costs for you to fulfill on your offers. How can you increase that profit margin? Right. We talked about collecting on unpaid, overdue debts. We talked about fulfillment being the most important system in your business and the greatest opportunity right in front of you to increase profit. Because if you are not delivering on, however your students define success for your program, then you’re not going to have a program for very long. And it’s going to be very hard to get new people coming into the program because you’re not getting results right. That comes from fulfillment. The next thing is what tweaks can you make to your existing sales process? Right. That can increase conversion. This is where those small tweaks can have a big impact in revenue and thus profit. The next one is how can you make more offers to your existing customers like cross-selling, complementary selling, etc. where it makes sense you can increase your price and then once you’ve done all those things, you’ve taken your pick, right? Maybe you don’t want to increase your price. 

Cool. Increase the number of people coming in your business, i.e. get more leads into your business, organic strategies, paid strategies. And then finally, the actual eighth way is to be upfront with your people about how much your your offer offers cost. People are tired of being interested in a program and then not knowing the price, and then they’re done. They’re gone because it’s not listening anymore. And again, I’ve been guilty of that and I’m changing that. So I hope this was helpful for you. Eight Ways to Increase Profit in your Online Business. Obviously, I don’t want you taking all eight things and you’re like, Okay, I’m going to go do eight things all at the same time. Now pick one literally from today’s episode and get after it. Go, go implement it. And then move on to the next thing. Let me let me know how it goes. Shoot me a DM over on Instagram at Rick Moretti. Let me know what you think about this. Are there any surprises here? Have you done any of these things? What kind of results do you get from putting these things into practice so that you can increase profit in your business? My friends, I appreciate you. Thank you as always for listening tuning in today. Until next time, be well and I’ll talk to you soon.