MBA1922 A Different Way to Charge for Services + Free Ride Friday
2 Feb 2026 · 10 min
This podcast episode (The Hundred Dollar MBA Show) hosted by Omar Zenhom teaches value-based pricing for service-based businesses. The host defines pricing by result instead of hourly rates, shares a personal case study where he redesigned a client website in exchange for 50% of incremental sales, and offers practical pilot advice (start with one client/service). The episode cites examples of commission-based models (affiliate commissions, ProfitWell’s Retain dunning service charging ~20% of recovered payments), references sponsor ad reads (QuickBooks, Dell Tech Day, Fidelity), and ends with a Free Ride Friday giveaway winner announcement (Diana Mitchell) for a $99 Automated Webinar Challenge course.
Questions this episode answers
2021-11-19
Diana Mitchell
$99
50% of additional sales above current baseline
30–40% commission on sales
Chapters
Let me tell you about Intuit QuickBooks. When I was starting out my business, I remember sitting at my desk late at night not working on my business but cleaning up numbers, tracking and reconciling payments and wondering how this became my life. But once I automated the admin side of things of my finances, those nights had disappeared and I felt a whole lot better. Outdo it with intuit QuickBooks QuickBooks is the trusted end to end solution that businesses rely on for getting paid, managing finances, paying employees, finding new customers, and more. QuickBooks provides a team of AI agents and trusted experts, so doing it yourself no longer means doing it alone. Their payment agent gets you paid faster, their customer agent finds leads, follows up and secures more sales, and the accounting agent automates and categorizes transactions. Get your critical business jobs done with QuickBooks on the Intuit platform. Ready to Save on New Tech? It's time for Dell Tech Day's annual sales event celebrating our customers with fantastic deals and benefits. Perks include Dell rewards, free shipping, premium Support and more. PCs like the Dell 14 with Intel Core Ultra processors will help you do more faster and with a premium suite of monitors and accessories, you can upgrade your whole setup with amazing savings. Visit Dell.com deals. Hey oh. Welcome to the Hundred Dollar MBA Show. Because a better business begins with you. That's why we deliver daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of Webinar Ninja, an independent software company. I started my co founder back in 2014 and today's episode is Free Ride Friday. Make sure you hang on to the end of the episode to hear who won this week's free ride. We're giving away a free ride to our Automated Webinar Challenge, a $99 course showing you how to automate your leads and sales with automated webinars. If you want to win a free ride, just leave us an Apple Podcast rating and review and you enter our weekly random draw. Listen in on Friday, like today's episode to hear who won. More about that later in today's episode. In today's episode you will learn a different way to charge for your services. If you're a service based business where you deliver any kind of service, whether it's developing websites or you're a videographer or a photographer, a lawyer, a performer, whatever it is, many people price their services in a very basic fashion. In an hourly fashion. They may do a group or package deal, but in today's episode I'm going to explain to you how you can price your services in a more creative way that can earn you more money and diversify your clientele. It's called value based pricing and I'll get into what it is and how you can implement it in your own business. I'll also share some examples how I implemented this type of pricing Value based pricing in my own service based business in the past. But warning, this type of pricing requires you to bet on yourself so you can cash in big time when it's time to get paid. If you're tired of knowing if your pricing is working or if you need to increase your hourly rate, you're going to love today's episode. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business.
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Whether you are offering services now or you plan to in the future, you're going to love today's episode because this innovative way of pricing your services really works and actually can result in you getting paid more money. Many people think that services has to be paid by the hour or by the task. What I'm here to tell you is that at the end of the day what people are hiring is a result and you should price your services by the result. Let me give you a real example. Back in the day when I had a service based business where I was developing websites for small business owners. I had a client one time asking me to design their new website and I told them it's going to cost them between 5 and $10,000 depending on what they need. Immediately I got resistance and they Said, I can't afford that. I love your work, but I just can't pay that money. This is when I offered them a value based price. So I said, what are you trying to accomplish with your new website? And they said, well, I want a better website that will convert more customers. I want more people to buy my products and services and my current website just does not look professional enough. So I made this offer to them. I said, listen, how about you don't pay me anything, nothing up front, but I design your website, we launch it to the world, and if it helps convert more customers, then I want a percentage of the additional sales. Basically, I became sort of an investor of their business and they're like, well, how is this gonna work? Well, I said, well, how much money are you making right now with your current website? And they quoted me their figure and I said, okay, anything above that figure, I want 50% after we launch the new website. If we launch a new website and it helps convert more customers and get you more sales exactly what you want. I want 50% of all the sales that come in. They were kind of shocked that I offered to do this, something they never heard of before. But then they said they're not sure. Then I was like, well, why aren't you sure? You just said that you don't have five to $10,000. I will do it for you without you paying anything right now. If the site generates more sales, I want 50% of all the new sales above what you're getting now, which is. Well, then they said, I'm afraid that you'll do an amazing job and you're going to generate so many sales that I'm going to end up paying more than your original flat fee. So I said, let me get this straight. You're afraid that I'm going to help your business tremendously and you're going to get all the sales that you want and you're going to end up paying me for that, but at the same time you don't want to pay me up front for the work that's going to help you grow your business. They said reluctantly and kind of laughing, yeah, I guess. And I said, well, that's the choice you need to make. I'm going to take on all the risk. That means I'm putting in all the work and all the time betting on myself and betting on the fact that I can help your business get more sales. And if you believe in that, then we can move forward. And in all honesty, they counter offered and said, hey, so what if we do this, until I pay you $5,000, meaning that I'll give you 50% until it equals $5,000. I said, no, I'm not a bank, right? This is not a loan here. I'm taking a risk. I'm taking a risk. I can launch the site and you, your sales might not increase. So I need to be rewarded for that risk. You could see me kind of like as a founder in your business. That is taking equity for the time I'm putting in, in the work I'm doing. That's a major part of your business. At that point they kind of saw it and they're like, yeah, I guess you're right. I can't have my cake and eat it too. And then value pricing was born in my business and I did this all my other services as well. And I actually passed this on to my friends who had other service based businesses, people that ran Facebook ads for their clients and they said, hey, I'll run your ads for free, but I'm gonna use my affiliate link and get 30, 40% commission on all the sales. Is that okay with you? That sounds great. I'm making money and you're making sales for me and you're running ads for me. So at the end of the day, value based pricing is based on what the outcome is. What does the customer actually want? Give them the outcome and get yourself a better. Even if that price is not sort of like an investment or you get a commission even, it's helping the customer and you can show the benefit. A good example of this is a service that ProfitWell offers called Retain. And it's basically a dunning service. Which means that sometimes when you're running a business, credit cards fail. Customers have a failed transaction because maybe the credit limit or their card is expired or various reasons, their job is to chase that down and try to secure that payment, try to recover that payment. Normally without the service, you're just kind of doing it yourself or you're just losing money. Retain recovers this for you and charges you a fee for it. And their fee is based on how much they recover. So it's like a percentage, like 20% of what you recover. So if they recover $1,000, they charge you $200. And for the business owner, this is a no brainer. You're making me $1,000, you're recovering $1,000. I didn paying you $200 is a no brainer. And in fact they recover the cash first and then charge you. So this is a great way to offer a service at a no brainer type of pricing. At the end of the day, the job I need done is somebody to recover my payments and therefore when they do it, I'm happy to pay it because the value they're giving me is way more than what they're charging fidelity.
Active ETFs have the flexibility to shift and transform as markets do the same. So inst. Instead of just riding an index, they can seek to outperform it by adapting to market conditions and pursuing new opportunities as they emerge. And while you get the potential outperformance of an actively managed fund, you can still buy and sell it on your terms just like any other etf. Markets can change in real time. Make sure your ETF can too. Learn more@fidelity.com ActiveETFs before investing in any exchange traded fund, you should consider its investment objectives, risks, charges and expenses. Contact Fidelity for a prospectus, an offering circular, or if available, a summary prospectus containing this information. Read it carefully. While active ETFs offer the potential to outperform an index, these products may more significantly trail an index as compared with passive ETFs. ETFs are subject to market fluctuation and the risks of their underlying investments. ETFs are subject to management fees and other expenses Fidelity Brokerage Services LLC Member NYSE SIPC.
To wrap up today's lesson, what you're trying to do here is offer your client the a no brainer deal. Now if money is tight, meaning that your cash flow, the income you make in your business is super tight, I recommend you don't take on all your clients in this fashion. You maybe do it with one of your clients, see how it pans out and move on to maybe two clients, three clients. This is what I do with my business. And you can start out with maybe just one of your services, not all your services. You can actually do this with so many things. You can even do this for courses. I've seen coaches and trainers offer their courses at a discounted rate in exchange for a percentage of profits from the actual students endeavor. Let's say for example, you're coaching dentists how to improve their dental practice and you're teaching them a specific marketing technique in the course. You show them exactly how to do it and you offer at a discounted rate in exchange for a percentage of the profits of sales. Sales. When they use this marketing technique, you could be introducing them to Facebook ads or YouTube ads and basically it becomes like an incubator. It's beyond a course because now you're an investor in the company, you get profits from the work that you have taught them and in exchange the students benefit because they get more sales, they're using your techniques and they're learning from your course but also applying it and getting the benefit. So your job is to look at your service based business. Take a look at what are the opportunities that you can exploit that you can take advantage of using value based pricing. Thanks so much for listening to the 100 on NBA show, but today's episode's not over. It's Free Ride Friday. Let's see who won this week's Free Ride and the winner is Diana Mitchell. Diana Mitchell says great, easy to digest podcasts with usable insights. Everything about this podcast fits perfectly with my life. I'm trying to take my company to the next level and my personal development is essential to that growth. The tips and insights you offer are excellent and the length of each episode is just right. Keep up the great work. Well, thanks Diana for the great review. You are our Free Ride Friday winner. Make sure you email me over at Omar MBA Net so I can hook you up with the lifetime membership to our automated webinar course so you can automate your leads and sales with automated webinars. It's a $99 value. Yours for free for winning the Free Ride. If you want to order Free Ride, just leave us an Apple podcast rating and review just like Diana and listen in on Friday to see if you want. It's that simple. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode, but before I go, I want to leave you with this. Whenever somebody doesn't buy from you, it's a golden opportunity to learn. You want to know why? Why didn't you buy? What about my product or service or pricing did not work for you? You're going to learn a ton about how you can change your offering to cater to customers like that. Or maybe there is a misunderstanding. Or maybe there's a new way you can offer your products to attract customers that are on the fence. There's a ton to learn when you get a no. So ask questions, send them an email, get on a call. It's worth your time. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you on Monday's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.
Fidelity Active ETFs have the flexibility to shift and transform as markets do the same. So instead of just riding an index, they can seek to outperform it by adapting to market conditions and pursuing new opportunities as they emerge. And while you get the potential outperformance of an actively managed fund, you can still buy and sell it on your terms just like any other etf. Markets can change in real time. Make sure your ETF can too. Learn more@fidelity.com ActiveETFs before investing in any exchange traded fund, you should consider consider its investment objectives, risks, charges and expenses. Contact Fidelity for a prospectus, an offering circular, or if available, a summary prospectus containing this information. Read it carefully. While active ETFs offer the potential to outperform an index, these products may more significantly trail an index as compared with passive ETFs. ETFs are subject to market fluctuation and the risks of their underlying investments. ETFs are subject to management fees and other expenses. Fidelity Brokerage Services, LLC Member NYSE SIPC.
