26 Oct 2026 · 18 min
In this episode of The $100 MBA Show, host Omar Zenhom examines why Adobe is losing ground to competitors like Canva and emerging AI tools, arguing that the core issue is Adobe’s failure to put customers first and to let them experience value before purchase. He illustrates Adobe’s missteps—from costly CD sales to restrictive cloud trial policies—and contrasts them with the free‑first, value‑driven approaches of rivals. Zenhom then presents a four‑step framework for businesses to avoid a similar fate: (1) make it easy for prospects to try the product, (2) deliver high‑value experiences during the trial, (3) charge for transformation rather than mere information, and (4) meet customers where they are in their buying journey. He expands on the framework with concrete examples, including his own experience with Webinar Ninja, the value‑ladder concept (free content → low‑ticket offers → memberships → high‑ticket events), and how companies like Canva, Amazon Prime, and Apple structure their ladders. Throughout, he weaves sponsor messages (Justworks, Dell Pro, Quo, Upwork, Mazda) and encourages listeners to subscribe for future lessons on making their first $1,000 online. The episode blends analytical commentary with practical, instructional advice, aiming to help small business owners design customer‑centric acquisition strategies.
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The Dell Pro, built for you. dell.com/dell-pro. Is Adobe officially cooked? An Adobe customer lost it when they got hit with a ridiculous cancellation fee. He got so angry that he decided to vibe code identical versions of all of Adobe's best apps like Photoshop, Premiere, Illustrator, Lightroom, After Effects, all of them. And then as a big F you, he gave all these apps away for free. Adobe is worth billions of dollars. So if it can happen to them, it can happen to you. Today I'm going to show you how to avoid the mistakes that Adobe has been making for years. And it all boils down to the fact that they're not serving their customers. They're not putting their customers first. You need to give away value, enough value for people to want to pay you money for more. Today we're going to discuss how Adobe got it wrong and how their competitors like Canva and even AI these days have been eating their lunch for years. Welcome back to the $100 MBA Show. I'm your host, Omar Zenhom, where I deliver practical business lessons 3 times a week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to help you start, grow, and scale your business. In business, you gotta make it easy for your customers to see that you're valuable. Let me say that again. You gotta make it easy for your customers to see that you're valuable. So how does that actually happen? So the first thing is that people notice you, right? They notice what you are. They might see you on Facebook, they might see you on Instagram, they might see a video of yours, they might see an ad of some sort. Once they notice you, they need to be able to try your value. So they try is the next level, right? So this is like step 1. Step 2 is try. Okay, they try. Now, the 3rd step is critical. They have to experience some sort of value. They got to feel like you are helping them in some way. The more value you give, the easier it is for them to buy, which is step 4, is when they buy. Okay. And the buy doesn't happen unless they see enough value. All right, this is going to make sense once I now show you. This is what Adobe's been doing for years, okay? Whether it's back in the day when they were selling their software on CDs, you would have to buy their CDs for literally hundreds of dollars before you can even understand what the value they have. So for example, you might notice them on the shelf at a store, or maybe a friend told you about them. So you got the notice part, right? But you can't really try unless you cough up Hundreds of thousands of dollars, right? So people get blocked here, right? And they aren't able to continue down this path so they can actually get to the buy stage. Then they graduated from that and they had, you know, Adobe in the cloud, right? So they tried to make it easy with a 14-day trial, but unfortunately you have credit card on file. They make it incredibly hard for you to cancel even during trial. So they don't actually give people a chance to see the value. So with Canva, they have millions of users that use their product, okay? So they— people notice, they try, they get enough value so that they can convert to a paid user, which is like a pro user with them. Now, not everybody's gonna become a pro user, but they never will— they'll be a pro user if they don't give enough value in that free account. Again, Adobe's being disrupted by AI because it's easy to create software with AI. Now, software is one thing we're gonna talk about. Adobe offers more than just software. There's services, all this other stuff. But at the end of the day, they're not giving people enough to use the product, to use it on projects, to use it on clients' works so they can see, hey, there's really value here that I can extract and then I can maybe pay for it once I make a little bit of money through my client work. But the point here is, is that Adobe's not learning this lesson. They're not putting their customers first. They're not allowing people to see the value before they buy. I want to make this super simple for you, so I'm going to give you a 4-step framework. The first step is You got to make it easy for people to try you. How many steps, how many steps does it take for somebody to experience your value? I'm not talking about they hear about you, they actually experience it. You got to make it easy for people to see what you got. You can't make it hard. Too many people make people jump through hoops, whether it's to book a call or, you know, enter your card before you get to see anything, or you got to buy the course before you even can see. If you're even able to teach or help them in any way. You gotta make it easy. Give them free content, free episodes, templates, workshops, webinars. You gotta give them even a sample, a free session for free. If you're a consultant or a coach, don't say, let's get on a call so that we could see if we're a good fit to see if my services can help you. No, get on the call and help them. Okay. Give them value. Give them something that they can walk away with and say, wow, That actually helped me. I want more. You got to remove as many blockers as possible from that value. So if you notice here at the $100 MBA, 99% of what we offer is free. We give away tons of videos, podcast episodes, like 2,800+ episodes. Okay. Templates, guides. We do webinars, we do live coaching. We do a lot of stuff, right? Why? Because we want to make sure that people have no doubt that if we ever sell something, that they understand that we could be valuable to them, that we can help them. If basically the only blocker for them is, can they afford it or do they have the time for it? And we even address these blockers by offering things at different price points and things that don't really have anything that's time-bound. Like you can sign up and consume this content, like our program, at any time. Understand that you're in the transformation business. You're not giving away information. Okay? People pay you so that they can get a result. Now, again, if you're in content, you're a coach or a consultant, your video's online. This is good. It's a good way for you to show your value. But at the end of the day, when they come to pay you, they're paying for specific information that applies to their business. They're paying for accountability. They're paying for the fact that, hey, Somebody's going to be able to answer some questions if I have them. So this is what they're really paying for, not information. Same thing when I was running my software company, Webinar Ninja. In software, you got to show people that this tool actually works, that they can actually use it and get a result. A job can be done. This is why we had free trials. This is why we allowed people to use the software with no limits so that they can get a win. Now you might be saying, Omar, this is costly. It costs me a lot of money to create content. It costs me a lot of money to offer You know, a free trial on my software because there's server costs and there's bandwidth and there's all this other stuff. Yes, it's called customer acquisition cost, right? If you ran ads to drive traffic to your website so people could buy, you would pay money, right? So you're going to spend a little money, less money by the way, by giving away free value. When you give away free trials or free plans or free content or free anything, this is not a marketing cost. This is a customer acquisition cost. There's a chance for us To be able to acquire customers on pennies on the dollar, which is really, really affordable for you as a startup, as somebody who's self-funded. But at the same time, if your product is great, which I hope it is, it's going to be the best way to sell your products or services. Let me give you a perfect example. We have a listener to the podcast that wrote in. They've been listening to the show for years. Recently, we opened up enrollment for an in-person workshop here to show people how to strategically plan for the year so that they have their goals set. They know how step-by-step to fulfill these goals, how to make sure that they actually can achieve these goals. And when they saw that applications were open, they applied. And that program is a $2,000 program because it's in person. That would never happen if I never had a podcast, if I didn't give away free content for years and built that relationship with that listener. By the way, if you're curious about this workshop, just go to 100mba.net/plan. All the details are there. Listen, the market has changed. 10 years ago, you could sell 20 videos and call it a course and charge $2,000 for this online course. Okay. Because information was scarce, but now information is readily available anywhere. We're not just talking about YouTube or blogs. We're talking about AI is just coughing up answers and giving people exactly what they need in seconds. So you got to recognize the fact that information is not scarce. Okay. It's plentiful. What is scarce though, is implementation, right? A lot of people are getting overwhelmed with all this information. They don't know how to actually get going and do something with it. Have you ever called a business and it went straight to voicemail that's clearly from 2015 and you just hang up? Yeah, I know I do, but so do your customers. They do that too. That's why at some point you just gotta say, let's effing Quo. Today's episode is brought to you by Quo, spelled Q-U-O, the business phone system built so you never miss a call. With Quo, all your calls, texts, and voicemails live in one place, so anyone on your team can pick up a conversation, See the full history and respond fast. You can set up in minutes on any device, keep your existing number, and add teammates as you grow. No IT, no hassle. Plus, Quo's optional built-in AI agent handles after-hours calls, answers questions, and even books appointments so you never miss a lead even when your team is offline. Money's on the line. Always say hello with Quo. Try Quo for free, plus get 20% off your first 6 months when you go to quo.com/MBA. MBA. That's quo.com/MBA. Support for today's show comes from Upwork. I've been using Upwork for over a decade to find top talent for my businesses. From software development and AI implementation to marketing, design, and business operations, Upwork is your one-stop shop for talent. 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. With over 170,000 freelancers holding 5-star ratings, you can hire with the confidence that comes from hiring someone with a verified track record. It's free to sign up and posting a job is easy. Visit upwork.com right now and post your job for free. That's upwork.com to connect with top talent ready to help your business grow. That's upwork.com. Upwork.com. All right, we're gonna move on to step 3 of the framework. But again, just to recap, the first step of the framework is to make it easy to try you. Step 2 is to give crazy value. You gotta give value when they try, right? You gotta make sure that they feel like, wow, this is really helping me. Whether that is, again, a consultation call, whether that is a trial of your software, whether that is the content that you put out there in the world. This is why in this stage you need to give your best, the best information, the best content, the best software, whatever it might be, because that's what's gonna lead to step 3 of the framework, which is when you charge for your services. And what are you gonna really charge for? Again, like we said, you're charging for transformation, not information. So let's drill into what that really looks like. Your actual product and service. When you're actually charging your customers. Like I said, information is everywhere. You can Google it, you can find it on YouTube, you can ask AI, but results are rare and they're worth paying for. People want a result. People want something to get done. This is why I always say services are a great business to start with because it's easy to sell a result. I have a messy lawn, I get a lawn care service and they clean up my lawn. There's nothing in between. There's nothing I have to do, right? It's just done. And you should see your product or service as binary like that. How do you get somebody to where they want to be, the state they want to be in? So if you're helping somebody to get fit and in shape, say they want to lose 10 kgs, then you, your job is to do what you got to do to make sure they get that result. Whether it's you have to give them a nutrition plan, whether you got to check up on them every day on WhatsApp, whether that is you drive them to the gym if you have to. Okay. I know that sounds extreme, But my point is, is that you need to do everything you can to make sure they get the result that they're looking for. Because the more consistently you can give people those results, the easier it is for you to sell it because people are gonna be talking about you everywhere. I'll give you an example. At Webinar Ninja, our software company, one of our taglines in our marketing materials was that you can create a webinar in 10 seconds flat. Why did we have that tagline? Because at the end of the day, the reason why people are buying software is because they want something done for them quickly. Pain-free, right? They don't want to cobble together a bunch of pieces of software and hopefully all the integrations work. So when they actually tried it or even saw it in a demo, wow, I just put in some information, I hit create webinar, and seconds flat, 10 seconds, even less than 10 seconds, it created all the pieces of the webinar landing page and this and the email notifications and the thank you page and everything, right? And the point here is, is that you're showing them that you got what you asked for. We solve the problem for you directly. So find out whatever your customer is looking for, what transformation they're looking for, what result they're looking for. Find a way to give it to them as fast as possible, as pain-free as possible. A good example of this is Amazon Prime, right? People don't want to wait for their products or service. You know, they can just say, oh, I can just go and get it from the store when I come home from work. No, by Amazon having this service called Prime, which is even same day these days, You can get your products at your door within hours. So there's no excuse. They're delivering what you want quickly. If you're enjoying today's episode, I want you to hit subscribe because we have an upcoming episode I don't want you to miss, all about how to make your first $1,000 online. So if you are a newbie, if you are fresh, you've never made any money with your business or any kind of venture outside your paycheck, then you're going to love this episode. So hit subscribe so you don't miss it when it drops. Step 4 of the framework is to meet your customers where they are. Every customer is not the same. You're going to have customers at different stages in the buying journey or different stages in their own personal journey. If you're a fitness coach, you're going to have people that have been working out all their life. You're going to have people that have never worked out in their life. They never stepped foot in a gym. You're going to have people in between. You're going to have people that were athletes and then they haven't exercised in 10 years. So you got to be able to cater to all those needs. And that's just one vertical. There's people that are also in different stages when it comes to their financial ability to pay for your product or service. So for example, with Adobe's competitor Canva, they offer a free plan. So you could pretty much do anything you want with Canva with the free plan. Now there are some bells and whistles you can't do with the pro. You have to have the pro account, which is really worth it because it's actually pretty affordable. But the point here is, is that Canva understands not everybody can afford to pay us money. So what we wanna do is we want to be the go-to solution for any kind of image creation, creating any kind of stills or any kind of content for social media. They just go to Canva every single time. And then when they can afford to go pro, they don't think about other competitors. They just go back to Canva and pay them. Canva understands that they wanna be the authority of creation of whether that's slides, whether that's images, whether that's content for social media. They want to be the authority in the minds of their customers. They don't want people to go shopping around. They want people to just get part of their ecosystem. They already have an account with Canva. No one wants another login. So they're like, okay, I might as well just upgrade my Canva account now that I need some of these pro features. In business, this is called a value ladder. So do you have a value ladder in place for your business? So a typical value ladder looks like something like this. So your first step of the ladder is free content, maybe YouTube videos, okay? Or maybe social media content, but then you want to allow people to go a little bit deeper with what you offer. So you offer an entry-level product. A good example of this is like a book. This could be an ebook, this could be a physical book, but it's $10, right? It's $15, it's $20, very entry-level. Then you might have a one-time 6-week challenge course that's $200. That's the next level of the value ladder. And then from there you can offer them, you know, an ongoing membership in your community that charges, you know, $40 a month, right? So that's, you know, or $400 a year. And that is a little bit more expensive. Then you might have some in-person conference or some in-person events that you charge $1,000 per ticket. Then you might have a higher level that's like your mastermind group that charges $10,000 a year. You get the point. There are steps to this and every company does this. You just don't notice this because you probably I probably didn't look at it very closely, but if you look at Apple, for example, they have an entry-level product called AirPods. From there, you can buy a watch. From a watch, you can buy an iPhone. From an iPhone, you can buy a MacBook. From a MacBook, you get a MacBook Pro. From a MacBook Pro, you get the desktop. From there, you constantly go up the ladder and constantly get more value from Apple and spend more money with them. They understand that not everybody can afford the most expensive computer. They need to enter the ecosystem somehow. Through a lower rung of that ladder. So those are the 4 steps of the framework. Number 1, make it easy to try you. Make sure it's easy for your customers to try what you got. Number 2, when they are trying you, you got to make sure that whatever they're trying is the best thing you have, is the best content, is the best features in your software. If you're going to allow them to have a trial, give them the maxed out pro account so that they can see all the features. Number 3, charge for transformation, not information. Whether it's a product, a service, coaching, consulting, whatever it might be, make sure that you're getting them a result. And number 4, make sure that you have a way to meet your customers where they are in the buying journey. Think about your own value ladder. See where you can add value no matter where they are in their journey. So let's answer the question, is Adobe dead? In my opinion, no. The lookalike software that Brandon Thomas created called Artcraft, It doesn't have support. If there's a bug, there's no way for you as a non-techie to fix it. There's no hosting in the cloud so that you can access it anywhere. There's no way to get support. But, in a way, Adobe is affected. They kind of got cut like Ivan Drago in round 2 of Rocky IV. They're showing blood now, a little bit. The competitors are the winners, really, because people are now thinking twice about using Adobe. Is it really worth all that money? For some companies, it will be to get that support and get those updates. And it's a software that they've been using for decades, so they're used to it. But for small startups, maybe not. Maybe they're going to use some of the competitors like Canva or some other AI tools that have come up in recent days. What I found most interesting about the story is that if you go to the forums to see what's being said on social media about this whole thing, people are not cheering for Adobe, which is interesting. They kind of want to see it go down, which is a problem It's not a good look for their brand. Now, having said all that, Adobe creates a great product. It's one of the best products when it comes to video creation, photo creation, photo editing with Lightroom. It's some of the best stuff. I've used After Effects for years when I was creating motion graphics. It's really, really good. How good? Well, this episode's gonna be edited by Adobe Premiere, not Artcraft, because it's the software that we're used to, something we've been using. We have templates built in, all that kind of stuff. So. It's something to think about, about being in the game for long enough to have such wide adoption. But there's still lessons to be learned from what happened. You can build a business that makes it easy for your customers to see your value, and therefore when they're ready to buy, they don't think about going to their competitors. They go back to you. If you found today's episode helpful and you want more practical business lessons to help start, grow, and scale your business, subscribe to the podcast. All you got to do is hit subscribe or follow on your favorite podcast app, the one that you're using right now. By hitting subscribe, you get our next episode automatically. It's absolutely free, and it's a way for you to commit to growing your business. I'll check you in the next episode.
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