MBA1837 How Entry Level Products Can Help Your Business + Free Ride Friday
2 Feb 2026 · 3 min
Omar Zenhom explains how cheap entry products drive sales of expensive ones. A YouTube creator built a free mini-course that converted students into a $2,000 flagship course. The tactic works everywhere: Disney resorts upsell packages, ecommerce sites sell $200 shirts after cheap accessories.
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You've made it on time for the McDonald's breakfast menu. You think to yourself, finally, I could start my day with my perfect breakfast. But what if breakfast could be even more perfect with the hot honey sausage egg biscuit it finally is. This won't last forever, so go to McDonald's and get it while you can. Ba da ba ba ba.
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Entry level products have been around for a very, very long time. I didn't invent this and it's not a new trend, but it's tried and true. It works. It works in large businesses, small businesses, it works for consumer products, B2B products, and you probably have been a customer of this model of buying an entry level product and then moving up to the flagship product. If you have ever been to any of Disney's theme parks, or you may not know it, but you've probably been through this, a typical theme park customer will buy a theme park ticket when they go to Disney World or Disneyland or Euro Disney or wherever you are. This is kind of the basic, this is like where you start. If they had a great time and their family can't stop talking about that time they went to Disney, they're going to want to go back. But this time they want to have a bigger, better experience. This is why Disney offers so many different tiers to their products so often the next time around, the family will say, hey, let's stay at Disney. Let's go to one of the Disney hotels, stay at one of the resorts and get a package deal. This at Disney is their flagship product where people actually hand over Disney, their wallets and say, take care of me, give me the vacation of my dreams. They know that a lot of people won't start that way. They know that they start with, hey, I want to get thrifty. I'm going to just buy the tickets. I'll, you know, go to stay at the Day's Inn and I will commute my way with my car to each of the parks or the park every day. And I know have all the perks of going to the park early and all that kind of stuff. But hey, I want to go to Disney and I'm going to give it a try. That's the first time around. The second time around, they're going to go for the full experience and this is where they make their money. Why? Because when they live on the property, when they're staying at one of the resorts, one of the reasons why people do this is because it's quote unquote convenient. They get free bus transport to the resorts, they get to go to special themed dinners, they get to go to the park early and leave late. But most of all, they're staying at Disney. That means all the little purchases that they're making at Disney, the customer's buying it from a Disney property, whether it's a bottle of water, a banana or souvenirs. This is why Disney wants you to get to that level. And they know an entry level product like just admission is going to work. But it's not just easy. You walk down the road in your neighborhood and you go to your local masseuse or massage store, I guess it's called Massage parlor. Is that like old fashioned or something? But the point is, is that they have entry level products. 30 minute foot reflexology. It's the cheapest product on the menu, but it gets you in the door. It gets you to feel relaxed and feel the ambiance of the place. They'll even give you a nice cup of tea and you'll want to relive that experience. But the next time around you'll be like, you know what, let me go for that full body massage. Heck, we'll even go for an hour. Now the reason why companies do this, businesses do this, is obviously to try before they buy. And when you say try before you buy, but they're actually paying for that try. It's a low barrier of entry, but it gets them through the door. Now obviously with Disney, those tickets are not cheap, but it's still cheaper than doing the whole vacation at Disney. So what about your business? How can you do this? Well, what you do is you look at your flagship product. Let's say you are a YouTube expert and you coach people how to build a successful YouTube channel. You might have a YouTube course and it goes through everything you need to know to be successful at YouTube. That course is $2,000. Now, not everybody's going to bite the bullet and go ahead and buy a $2,000 product. And what often a lot of people do is they offer something free, like a free video or they have videos on YouTube to promote their products, but there's nothing in between. There's no entry level product, meaning you can take one module, one video, really, or concept in your course where you maybe just target one area of concern, like choosing your topic for your YouTube channel, and you build out a Mini course on that or a three day challenge and you charge $50, $90 for that. Now what this does is that people are going to bite on that because, hey, it's not a lot of money to part with. And it tackles one of the biggest problems they might have in starting a YouTube CH channel. It gets them going, it gives them momentum. And if you could deliver on that mini course, mini challenge, they're going to want more. And obviously in the course or in the challenge, you can offer them your $2,000 product. Now, a customer like that is more likely to buy from you because they just got a win after they gave up money. They have fresh in their mind how happy they were with their purchase. This is why when you go to a live event, usually it's an annual event, they will sell next year's tickets at the event because it's fresh in your mind. Wow, this is a great event. I want to go next year. Now you're going to do that, but with a entry level product. Now, I've been doing this for years actually. And actually our paid webinars, we do a series webinar of three different days. It's like a mini challenge and the registrations to that challenge and it's live. This is not recorded. They're higher even though they're paying for admission than our free webinars. So I actually increased my paid webinars versus my free ones. Still do the free ones, but not as many as I do do is paid because I get more people through the door. And of course they're paying. And of course that revenue we're making from that paid course, I can use that revenue to advertise and bring in more customers. Even if you're selling physical products, start with an entry level product. I did this with my E commerce store when I was selling high quality tailored clothing for men. My flagship product was a dress shirt for $200. It's a little bit higher than what people are used to paying under a dress shirt. So I had entry level products to get them through the door to just become a customer. Cufflinks, ascots. Yeah, I used to sell ascot and even pins for their lapels on their suits and their sports jackets. These products were a fraction of the price of my dress shirt. They're about $20, $30. But it got people through the door. They loved the product, they loved the packaging. They thought, wow, this is really cool. I'm gonna go and get one of those dress shirts. So I want to challenge you this next week to start Planning out and have something fleshed out. Start planning to offer an entry level product. If you don't want to have one yet, look at your flagship product and take a step back. A little bit of a large step back. What is a taste of whatever you offer? So even with my physical product I was offering a dress shirt for $200, but really what I was offering was unique, high quality style and I want to give them a taste of that with my accessories. So let's make sure those elements are.
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Up today's lesson, entry level products are a great way for you to get customers through the door. For them to try you at a low barrier of entry so they can fall in love with you and buy more from you. Now what this does is this increases your arpu, which is your average revenue per customer or per user that is used in SaaS. This is a term that's used in SaaS, but we can use it in any business and it basically means how much money do you get per on average per customer? And it basically increases the cart value which they call in E commerce, how much money is in the cart, how much money you actually get from each customer because they're not just going straight for the flagship product, they're going with the entry level first and then the flagship and then who knows what's next. You know it's your business, right? And because you have that entry level product, you get more people through the door. Now of course not everybody that buys your entry level product is going to buy your flagship product. But you still made a sale from somebody that you didn't know about because or you turned away because they were not interested in your high priced product. They were not ready for your high priced product. Let your customers graduate to your flagship product. Don't let it be the end all and be all. Thanks so much for listening to the 100 MBA show take on my challenge. Apply what you've learned today and start building out your entry level product or products. Today's episode's not over though. It's Free Ride Friday. Let's see who won this week's free ride. And the winner is TT2233. That's the handle on Apple Podcasts. TT says boost. You need five stars. 10 minute real world business lessons is how I start my day. This podcast is a perfect compliment to the MBA degree I'm pursuing. Highly recommended. Thank you TT for the great review. Your mission is to email me at omar00mba net so I can hook you up with Easy Course over EasyCourse Co our $500 course on how to build your own online course. Go ahead and do that right now. Email me so I can hook you up. If you want to win a free ride, just leave us an Apple Podcast rating and review. Go ahead and do that right now. You can do it on your desktop, you can do it on your mobile, you can do it through the app. Tell us what you think of the show and you enter our weekly random draw and then listen in on Friday to see if you want that easy. Thanks so much for listening. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. Start with one entry level product. Don't start with five, okay? Because you really want to focus on perfecting it, improving it and then moving on. When I had my e commerce store, I started with Cufflinks and I ran with that for three months. It was going well. I had that whole system set up where they graduate from Cufflinks to the dresher and then I introduced the next entry level product. Start with one, perfect that system and then move on to the next. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in Monday's episode. I'll see you then. Take care. Gas, snacks, tolls. This trip is draining my wallet. Yeah, but we'll be with family. You're in a good mood. What deal? What's my deal? I saved at Metro with no activation fees and I got one line of 5G for just $25 per month. Kept the phone I love and a 5 year price guarantee on my top tuxt and data detour to Metro. Get that more for your money feeling only at Metro by T Mobile. Just bring your number 31st month and 25 after with autopay not available. If with Metro or T Mobile in the past 180 days.
