MBA2211 Why So Many Struggle to Earn 10K a Month
2 Feb 2026 · 12 min
Omar Zenhom breaks down why most entrepreneurs get stuck below $10K monthly revenue. The gap isn't luck: it's recurring revenue models like memberships and subscriptions, showing up consistently, and eventually hiring a team to scale beyond what you alone can do.
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I say reaching 10k a month in revenue, I'm talking about month over month, consistently, not just one month or two months in a row. I'm talking every single month, a total of $120,000 in revenue every single year. This is a milestone that every new entrepreneur should try to hit as soon as possible because it allows them to focus on their business, to really give it their all. Because they could pretty much live off that and be able to then go ahead and grow that beyond 10k. Now of course we want to make sure our expenses are low so that way we can make as much profit as possible from that 10k every single month, as well as build a business model that allows us to happen organically every single month without having to to rely on constantly launching and selling throughout the year. And that's really the first key. A lot of people think they can just get to 10k by just out hustling people. They go after one on one coaching clients, they do hourly rates, they freelance, they sell one off products or courses and that's fine and all, but this is not giving you the magic of reoccurring revenue. This is what makes things much easier on you and makes it easier to get to 10k. Why? Because with reoccurring revenue, you really just need to earn the customer. You have to sell the customer once. And once they're in your ecosystem, in your system, in your product, your service, they're paying you month over month. Say, for example, you have like a membership program that costs $100 a month. You know, you just need to sell 100 customers. You need 100 customers to pay you every single month. $100, that's $10,000. But let's say you're selling one off products or one off programs and there are $300 or $400. You might be making more on that sale, but you have to continue to get new customers over and over and over every single month. This is why I tell my clients that I coach that you need to turn your business into a reoccurring model. Reoccurring membership, even if this means your membership or what you charge upfront is going to be a little bit less, that's okay because you're going to be giving great value month over month. The best coaches I know that teach, some of the best people you know in business have coaching programs that are reoccurring month over month. They pay monthly or annually, and they charge 1,000, 2,000, $3,000 a month. And they can bank on the fact that they got this revenue from this customer. They've earned this customer's business. Now they can go out and get more customers. Now you know how much each customer will at least spend with you. This is called lifetime value. So for example, if you have an annual membership to your training program, let's say it's high ticket coaching, it's $10,000 for the year. You know that the lifetime value of this customer is at least $10,000, meaning they're going to spend at least $10,000 with you, maybe even more if they renew year over year. But let's say just $10,000. You know that when you run ads, when you run marketing, when you try to earn a new customer and it costs you, let's say 300, $400 per acquisition, you're happy to pay that because you're earning $10,000 per acquisition, your profits are like $9,700. If you spent $300 to acquire this customer. But it's hard to do that if you don't have a large amount of lifetime value. Let me give you the opposite example. You're selling a course for 300 bucks. Now, in order for you to have a good profit on this course, you're limited to how much money you can spend to actually gain that customer, to earn that customer in marketing, in ads, in sales calls, all that kind of stuff. The margins are a lot less. This is why a reoccurring revenue model is the way to go. You'll notice that a lot of people now are doing memberships like communities with forums and chats and training. And this is so they can charge month over month for this community. Now you have to remember, whatever you are offering, if it's a reoccurring model, you have to earn this customer, you have to give them value month over month. So it can't just be a standalone course and you're just pay X amount every month for that course. That's more of a payment plan, not a recurring model. You want to make sure you're adding something or giving them something every single month. It's office hours. Maybe it's coaching, maybe it's access to a software that you have. Whatever it might be, you might be listening, saying, omar, this is great if you're a coach or a course creator, but what if I'm selling physical products like an E commerce store? Well, you don't have to look no further than Amazon. Amazon knows the power of reoccurring revenue. That's why they created Prime. They know again, they're going to get X amount of dollars from every single customer that is subscribed to prime every single month. This allows them to have a baseline and it allows them to know that they're going to go shopping at Amazon because they're going to get free shipping. So they're encouraged to go back to Amazon and spend more at the store. Now, if you have an E commerce store, there is nothing stopping you from creating the same business model in your own e commerce store selling a Prime membership. I did the same thing with my own e Commerce store 13 years ago, okay? I had like a VIP club where they get incentives and discounts and free shipping. I had free shipping above a hundred dollars because back then shipping was costing an arm and a leg. Today you might be able to offer that on a minimum order of $50 or more. You know your own economics. So the point is, is that embed a reoccurring revenue model in your E commerce store. Now here is the difference between people that hit 10k and those who don't or quit. And it's all about consistency. If you want consistent revenue, you need to consistently show up. It's that simple. I tell my own coaching clients, hey, if you want to hit this number you gotta just commit to the next year of putting in full time effort. Even if you're in a job, you know, cramming the errors after work, weekends, holidays. That's what I did. I side hustles for a decade and built businesses on the side doing that. And your business will grow if you consistently give value. Because let's say, for example, you are a online coach and you have a coaching program, you're not going to have a ton of content when you start. You're going to have to build the content as you go. You're going to have to record your coaching sessions, add it to your library, build courses out, supplemental materials, workbooks. It's going to take consistent time and effort for you to create enough value to earn 10k. Remember, you're going to attract the value that you present. So if you present great value with great content, that's going to take time to build, then you're going to attract great customers. Customers that actually value what you have and are willing to pay. So whatever you do in your business, whatever you offer, understand that consistency is key. Adding value, adding content, adding great stuff to your offering every single day, every single week, every single month, will increase the value of your entire business and get you the customers you need to get to that 10k. So that means you have to commit and put it in your calendar and make sure you cross these two dues off at the end of the week. And a lot of these things are big things that you have to break down into smaller to dos, whether it's your marketing efforts, maybe you're starting a YouTube channel and you got to consistently create videos. But creating a video includes micro steps, right? Shooting the video, editing the video, uploading the video, doing the SEO in YouTube, marketing that video, maybe transcribing that video, making shorter clips and using those smaller clips to share them on social. So as you can see, just producing a video on a consistent basis for your YouTube channel every single week or so is going to cost you some time and effort. And the reason why people don't make it is because they just quit. And you need to commit. You need to say, no matter what the results are, I got to put in 52 weeks, 52 videos, for example. Why? Because those who succeed do the things that most people don't. Which means doing the work, making the effort, continuing to work at it, even when they want to quit, even when they're not seeing results immediately. And the thing is that as you put in the reps, you get better as a creator, as a producer, as a marketer, as a salesperson, as a copywriter. And you think it's because, hey, I am putting out all this content. Soon enough, people are going to watch it. It's actually what I found is that you just start getting better because you're doing so much of it over and over. You're refining your craft or getting better, and the quality is getting better, so therefore it's getting recognized.
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Sxm A few more tips when it comes to hitting that golden goal of 10k a month, they call it escape velocity to hit 10k. Because in space travel, when you leave the Earth's orbit, it doesn't take much more thrust. It doesn't take energy to travel. You're floating now. You're weightless. And in my experience, for most creator businesses, a 10k is that escape velocity number. Like I said, I found it much easier to go from 10k to 20k than from 0 to 10. Because now you have momentum. Now you have customers that trust you. You have customers that you could sell to. You have customers that can spread the word, word of mouth. You have a lot more at your disposal. You have some marketing channels you built. You have an audience maybe on social, maybe you have an audience on YouTube or podcasting that you can talk to and promote to and offer your products and services that can help them. But when you start with zero, you don't have a lot of levers to pull other than just brute strength. Just trying your best and working at it and building those assets that can help you once you're at escape Velocity. Now, the trap is a lot of people get to 10k and they continue to do the same things. If you want to go beyond 10k, 20k, 30k, 40k, 50k a month, 100k a month, you got to do different things. What got you here won't get you there. That means hiring a team, outsourcing, getting a VA or an en executive assistant, offloading some of the tasks that take all your time to somebody that has time that you're going to pay for. And then you can spend your time bringing in more dollars, bringing in the big bucks, right? Creating product marketing, sales, that type of stuff. But what most people do is they fall into the trap of like, okay, I made all my money doing this stuff. I. I don't want to change anything because I might lose it all. No, you're going to stagnate and things will get expensive. And it's much easier for you to start growing than to try to stay alive. This is when you transition from being self employed to being an entrepreneur. You become somebody who has an idea, has a vision, and gets the right people to fulfill that vision. So if you're not at 10k yet, it's good for you to just recognize that now and plan that, hey, that's what I'm going to do when I get to 10k. Cause you don't want to be trapped. I can tell you you can hustle your way to 10k a month, but it's not sustainable. You can't do this for the rest of your life. This is when you need to build a team around your business so they can do most of the heavy lifting and you can just focus on your magic, on your secret sauce, on the reason why people buy your products or services. Thank you so much for listening to the $100 MBA show. If you love what you hear, make sure you hit subscribe, hit follow. On your favorite podcast app. Whether it's Apple Podcasts or Spotify or Stitcher Radio or Himalayo Overcast, hit follow so you don't miss an episode, as well as get access to over 2200 episodes in our archives, go ahead and do that right now. It makes a big difference as well in promoting the show and letting the algorithm know that, hey, this podcast is pretty good. Thank you in advance for doing that. Before you go, I want to leave you with this. One of the things I learned in my last 20 years of entrepreneurship is your business grows as fast as you grow. What does that mean? That means as you build new skills, as you learn how to be a better leader, how to be better at hiring, how to be better communicator, a better thinker, a better planner, the better your business becomes because you start using these skills to improve your business. It's like you're swapping out in your business a new CEO every single month. As you get better and better, a new and improved version of the CEO that was there before. If you're sold on this idea and you're just like, hey Omar, how do I get started? The first thing I would say to get started is to get into a reading habit. Read 15 minutes in the morning, 15 minutes at night to be finishing at least a book a month, and that book will allow you to level up in that area in your business. If you're looking for recommendations, check out our Must read episodes on this podcast. Just search on our website. Must Read. Just go to 100- MBA-NET the search bar is up top right. Must read. You'll see all our must read episodes, which recommends some of the best books I've ever read. Thanks so much for listening to the 100 Lumbier Show. I'll check you in tomorrow's episode for Friday. I'll see you then. Take care. Of.
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