How to Multiply Profits with What You Already Have | Jay Abraham

Business growth strategist Jay Abraham explains how small businesses can unlock hidden revenue and profit by optimizing what already exists within their operations. In this episode of Strategic Edge, he introduces the concept of Revenue System Optimization and outlines how incremental improvements across marketing, sales, and customer experience can compound into significant growth.

Abraham emphasizes reducing friction in the buying process, targeting high-value customers, and leveraging overlooked performance drivers. Rather than chasing new resources, he encourages business owners to refine pricing, messaging, trust-building, and post-sale strategies to increase lifetime value and profitability. By focusing on small, strategic adjustments, companies can achieve scalable growth without additional capital or complexity.

Key discussion points:

• What Revenue System Optimization is and how it drives growth
• How reducing friction improves conversion and customer trust
• Key levers—pricing, targeting, and risk reversal—that boost results
• Why focusing on high-value customers increases lifetime value
• How small changes can compound into significant revenue gains
• The importance of aligning offerings with customer needs and motivations

Transcript

Welcome And The Big Premise

Jay Abraham 0:00

I believe every human being was born to be great. I believe no human being wants to be mediocre.

Announcer 0:17

All I can say about Jay is I've known him for 35 years, and for four and a half decades, he has been the go-to guy to optimize your business. Jay is one of the top people on the planet who knows how to maximize a business and its reach to his customer.

Announcer 0:28

You're watching Strategic Edge with Jay Abraham exclusively on ASBN.

Bridget Fitzpatrick 0:32

Hello everyone. Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Strategic Edge. I'm Bridget Fitzpatrick. I'm here with Jay Abraham. Now, most small business owners don't realize just how much growth is actually hiding inside their businesses. Jay Abraham, legendary business leader, marketing legend, executive coach, and founder and CEO of the Abraham Group, says the fastest way to build real wealth isn't by doing more, it's by optimizing what's already there. And here he is to explain, thank you so much for joining us.

Jay Abraham 1:01

It was my pleasure. I love uh contributing to your audience. Very, very enjoyable.

Bridget Fitzpatrick 1:06

And our audience loves listening to you. You have so much to offer. We really appreciate you being here. Let's start off with you often talk about the safest investment someone can make in improving their own business, is what most businesses overlook. Because talk to us about that.

Jay Abraham 1:22

Sure.

Revenue System Optimization Explained

Jay Abraham 1:23

So it's interesting. I have many, many proprietary concepts I've created over my career, and one of them is called revenue system optimization. It's looking at every interrelated factor and element that drives revenue in your business, and more importantly, drives profit in that revenue, and questioning whether you can do it better, differently, uh higher, you know, more profitably, and questioning every facet. For example, most businesses target an audience. How you target it, how you reach them is the first question. Can you make it more powerful? Can you make your proposition more appealing, enticing? Can you qualify the right kind of people? The next is when you start a relationship, because most people need to build on that relationship, are you using the most compelling proposition? Are you proving the value of your product or services strongly? Are you are you validating it with the right credibility? Are you basically demonstrating what it'll be like when the client has you instead of your competitor? Are you competing adequately against alternative sources? For example, if you were selling a supplement for weight loss, you're competing against uh portion control food, you're competing against uh uh trainers, you're competing against equipment. Are you what are you doing when you close the sale? Can you ethically add more additives, more product services, higher grading to double or redouble the profit, not the revenue? What do you do after the sale? And most people don't question any of that. Uh that you know this because I've done a lot of discussion over the past couple of shows. I've been involved in a thousand industries, not businesses. When you look at a thousand industries, again, not businesses, you see many higher, better, safer, more profitable, faster ways to do almost everything. But because most people follow the herd and they do it the same way as everybody else, they don't realize that if they dramatically multiply the yield that their efforts produce, it costs them nothing else. There's no more risk, it's just much higher yield. And that higher yield has two wonderful additives. One, it puts a lot more money in your pocket, but that lot more money multiplies continually the value of the business. And most SMBs don't really think about what happens when they're done with the business, when they want to retire, when they want to up their game, when they want to acquire something, when they want to uh if or God forbid something happens, and the same effort to grow your profit can be multiplying your net worth many times more.

Why Buyers Hesitate And Stall

Bridget Fitzpatrick 4:04

Okay, now growing profit during the sales process, you say that it would be easier, obviously, for a customer to say yes than no. How do businesses accidentally make buying harder?

Jay Abraham 4:15

Well, first of all, if if I'm trying to sell you or take take my services, okay? So there are a multitude of options out there. Option one is uh, you know, I'm I mean, you know my fees, I'm not gonna uh insult people with telling you what they're, but they're very high. So why would you want to pay me over somebody who's $200? Or why do you want to pay me or them over something you can get for $20 with AI? Or why do you think I would have a better perspective even if you paid me than somebody who was a specialist? Or how do you know you can trust me? And you don't know how long it'll take to monetize, and you don't know how easy it'll be to integrate it in your system. Any apprehension that's either conscious or subconscious, never unconscious, unconscious, you're in, you're in basically in a coma, is going to be a friction factor. And you want to eliminate all the friction factors. So you've got to prove, first of all, your credibility. You've got to prove your credibility usually many ways. If you have endorsers, that's good. If you have testimonials, that's obviously good. If you have comparative data, for example, the average client I help uh adds 57% profit in year one with no more investment or risk. Uh if you have stature, you know, 87 of my clients that were on the Inc. uh 500. I'm not I'm just picking examples, but you've got to basically overcome inherent reservation, apprehension, distrust. If you want to be trustworthy, the best way to be trustworthy is being more interested than talking. So the more I learn about you, your origin story, what got you there, you know, uh everyone says what keeps you up at night, you know, it's it's that's important. But what is it that you want more than anything for that business? Not the problem, but what's the opportunity that you're struggling with? I want to know what your hopes, what your dreams are, how you see the business. Because most people go into business for a couple of reasons. If you're a small business, you don't always go into it to make a lot of money. You go into it because you either don't want to be controlled by an employer, or sadly, you had a life crisis and you got thrown into it. But you've never really been trained on how to maximize profit, how to how to optimize the the long-term buying uh relationship with the client. So you get multiple purchases. You don't understand how to work on the geometry of business. You've never questioned any factor. In selling, for example, uh there, I think I've talked about it on other ones, but I'll bring this

Finding Business Levers Everywhere

Jay Abraham 7:07

up again. There's about eight levers, I'm all about levers. And I'll do a little bit of an attention deficit. In our life, levers basically give us enormous, enormous enhanced quality of living. You drive into your into your driveway, you open the garage, that's a lever. You get out of your car by pushing a button, that is a lever. You turn on a light switch, that is a lever. You walk into the kitchen and turn on another switch. You open the door of the refrigerator, that hinge is a lever. You get a Coke or a can of beer and you pop the top, that is a lever. Uh you go to watch this the Super Bowl and your your clicker's out of battery, so you get a screwdriver. That is a lever. Our personal lives have been driven to enhanced enjoyment by levers, and there is an infinite number of levers available in business, and most people don't see them. Is that too confusing?

Bridget Fitzpatrick 8:10

No, that's that makes a lot of sense. And how do we as business owners find those other levers to pull?

Jay Abraham 8:17

Well, I mean, I can basically go through a simple litany now, but again, you can mean there could be as many as 51 leverage or impact points you're not recognizing, so you're not taking advantage of. And I live in a world where if you increase each one of those 10, 20, 30 percent, which is not that hard unless you've been very, very masterful in how you've done it in the past, the combination is hundreds of percent more yield to the bottom line because it's already it's already happening. It's not like you're not doing it, you're just not doing it with anywhere close to the maximum result you could be getting for the action, the time, the interaction, the effort, the money you're spending, the access to the market. But start with how you're targeting your audience. I mean, really, most people don't target the most the most desirable audience. They don't even know the most desirable audience, they don't even know the 80-20 within their buyer base that are worth so much times more. Everybody's got a buyer base, and I would hope that a lot of these people have residual, meaning multiple purchases that have frequency. And if you don't, parenthetically, you should partner with somebody that does because acquiring the buyer in the first place is the hardest, the slowest, the most expensive. Reselling them something either you have or you get from somebody else is the easiest, and that's how you double, redouble, redouble again the profit that an asset called a buyer can be worth to you. But the first thing is how do you find your buyers? What media do you use? What sources do you use? What you know, what segments of a market to use? I mean, and most people do not target the highest and best category. That's the first thing. Second, how they do it is not the highest and best. They basically defer to people that really don't understand the psychology of a prospective buyer. If a buyer basically doesn't even isn't even certain they want something, or they have lots of optionality, they can choose lots of that provider, or there are lots of alternative ways to get it, like the example of weight loss. Yeah, I can I can buy a supplement, but I can also buy buy Jenny

Targeting The Best Buyer Segments

Jay Abraham 10:32

Craig food, or I can do shots, or I can get a trainer, or I can buy, you know, a gym. So I don't need you. How am I going to demonstrate to you, and and most people don't know how, that my solution is either the very best for everyone, which is arrogant and ignorant, or the very best for a category of people. And sometimes you've got to basically have a niche. Then when you when you understand I have to demonstrate the superiority, how many ways do you do it? You do it emotionally and you do it concretely. Emotionally is showing the pleasure of using it, the results that start accumulating, how you're going to feel energy-wise, confidence-wise, self-esteem-wise, how wonderful it's going to be to either have to take your clothes in or go buy new ones, how you're going to get compliments and you're going to like yourself better, and your significant other is going to be more attractive, and you're going to have a different resonance when you work. Then it's showing not necessarily the ease, but the leverage in the action versus the result. You know, three hours a week to lose 30 pounds, or, you know, or uh, you know, three sets of exercise, you know, to get rock hard abs, or whatever you're trying to do. Then you've got to prove your hypothesis. Okay, that sounds great, but how do I know that that is true? Well, you can do it with testimonials, but testimonials, a lot of people have testimonials. You can prove it better with endorsers, iconic people who either are known or their distinction is credible. Maybe the head of the chiropractic association of America, or uh, you know, the former senior designer of an equipment company that uh no longer is working there, or the head of Fitness Magazine, but you want something that's very credible. Then you want to show that the reason why. There's a miracle word, uh word class in marketing, which is reason why. You've got to be able to tell me what is

Proof Credibility And Risk Reversal

Jay Abraham 12:46

the reason why I should even pay attention? What is the reason why you are going to serve my need better? What is the reason why I need to trust you? So you've got to give me the reason why. And the reason why may be that you have uh designed this to use uh to use leverage in in machinery better. I mean, I used to, when I was younger, I did elevated push-ups. One pushup was the equivalent of four. So that was a really cool, cool advantage. What is the advantage you are bringing me and how can you make me believe it? And then you want to take away the apprehension, and that's called risk reversal. Risk reversal can be done with basically a 30-day guarantee, a satisfaction guarantee. It is much better done, and I've measured all this, and it can each one of the things we're talking about, and there's 50 sometimes factors in between. We call those OPIs. Everyone has KPIs, but OPIs are the overlook performance indicators or impact factors that no one even questions, but that can be made to double, redouble, redouble again performance of marketing, selling, lead generating and conversion, reselling. I'm getting a little bit deep, but it's but it makes sense, doesn't it? And I go on and on and on.

Bridget Fitzpatrick 14:04

And so much of the time as business owners, we think what sets us apart? What's the differentiator? But there's so much more than that.

Jay Abraham 14:10

Well, here's the big problem. And I was just in a meeting with a very significant client, and they were trying to come up with their value proposition, and everything they came up with they loved, but it was a platitude. It doesn't mean anything to other people. I can say quality dependability, um uh service quality dependability. To you, it might mean a lot. To me, it's a generalization that anybody, it's like table stakes. It has nowhere. You've got to denominate the reason why, and when you can contrast, you can show measurability if you can say the average person spending an hour on my equipment gets four and a half times the effect of an hour on uh, you know, you wouldn't want to name someone, you can, but then you could be get get sued, but of a different kind. So, in other words, my equipment is so elevated in its performance capability and its impact that an hour on this is worth three hours, you know, at the gym. And and then you can have a science cite it, and then you can have a side-by-side test. Then, I mean, I can go on and on and on, but each of these factors multiply dramatically the probability of success, and all things being equal, you do these things continually, your results are going to multiply, but your profit is going to increase even more because you got fixed overhead.

Bridget Fitzpatrick 15:36

And when you're talking to a potential client and you're trying to figure or you're trying to explain why they need your services or your products, everybody is so different, and the reasons why might be different. How do you figure that out?

Socratic Selling And Deep Intake

Jay Abraham 15:49

Well, I just start doing a Socratic interview. I just start asking them about the business, and I start questioning why. I look, first of all, what they do, how they do it. I'm talking about generating revenue. Why they do it, how it does. So start with those simple things. Okay. Why are you doing this? Well, what do you mean? Well, why don't you do this instead since it's got three times the probability of working? Well, I never thought about it. Okay. And and why do you do even if you didn't do that, you're lead generating. Why do you just do a general lead that's not going to qualify somebody? Well, what do you mean? Then I ask them, and and I sort of educate them very frankly to see the elevated understanding that I possess that they don't, and then I ask them if no one's ever shared this with them. And I look at it questioning almost not trying to provoke them, but in incurring their really their their reflection that why haven't anyone showed me this? Because most people understand this kind of a nuclear inner relationship that drives hyper performance. But then I'll I'll basically have this really wonderful. I always do a four-hour uh intake when I take on a long-term client. And it's just me doing battering of questions and listening to their answers, but helping them come to conclusions that there's a lot more they can do with what they're doing without spending any more money, any more time, any more people, just reallocating resources to different ways of doing it, to different l different directions of doing it, different sources of doing it. And and I'm getting a little abstract, but does that make sense?

Bridget Fitzpatrick 17:32

It makes total sense. And I love how you always talk about uncovering what levers you may need to pull for more revenue, uncovering what the customer really wants, uncovering all of the things that you need to make your business stronger.

Jay Abraham 17:46

Aaron Powell Well, I got started early in my life in the mail order business. And the mail order business, when I got started, was magazines and uh direct mail sales letters, the internet didn't exist. And it was very wonderful because I was taught disciplines of things like measurability, quantification, variability, testing. People don't realize this. You can do something one way and it'll produce an X result. You do it a different way, it can be 2x, 3x, or minus X. I've seen a change of a headline or the equivalent. You know what a headline is? It's a big block of words in the beginning of an ad, with most ads. It's a little different with digital advertising. But the equivalent is a subject line. It's the opening paragraph in a sales letter. It's it's the cover letter and or the commentary under uh under um graphic imagery, uh uh graphs, charts, pictures in a brochure. It's the first phrase that a salesperson says when they're cold calling and when it's in calling or when they're when somebody's walking into a store. We've seen changes

Testing Small Changes For Big Gains

Jay Abraham 18:56

in in doing that produce up to three to four hundred percent increases, same traffic, same opportunity, just a different result. We've seen changing a risk reversal, how you take away the risk, uh, double and triple result. We've seen adding more credibility that was denominated, in other words, not just saying, you know, we have better better materials, but our materials are gauged to, you know, to last 25 years instead of two. Our you know, our uh our joints are 500 pound resistance instead of 100. Things that make people, even if it doesn't necessarily correlate, they go, wow, that's gotta be better. And then all things being equal, if we're priced only a bit higher, or or parity, that makes it very compelling. But there's lots of ways. Also, you can add a bonus, and in many situations, that alone will multiply result by 30 to 300 percent. There's all these different additives you can do, or alternatives you can do, or enhancements you can do to each segment of the revenue generating process, and each one separately, not combined, could add 10, 20, 30, 100 percent. And when you combine them all, it's off the chart. I mean, I have many stories of people that have exploded, and people go, that's unbelievable. What's unbelievable, frankly, and heartfelt is that so many entrepreneurs accept such a fraction of a fraction of the yield, the result, the impact, the outcome, the income they could be getting from the life they invest in their business.

Bridget Fitzpatrick 20:38

That's so true. Now, for those business owners that are figuring out the other levers they can pull, the other layers of revenue they can be creating, how do you how do they keep

Priorities Low Hanging Fruit First

Bridget Fitzpatrick 20:49

from feeling like they're spread too thin? Like they might be focused on one business, this is making them a lot of money, but there's all of these other areas of their business that you make.

Jay Abraham 20:57

The way that I normally, because I I I don't do the heavy lifting anymore. I'm a strategist, I'm a I'm a I'm a um I do marketing strategy, business modeling, distribution channel enhancement, uh elevating the preeminence. I do lots of work with partnering. I also do an enormous amount of reclaiming sunk costs and and getting you know leads that didn't convert to monetize, people who bought one time but could have bought more to start buying again, people have bought everything, finding other ways to monetize them, using the distribution channels differently. But in answering your question, the way I always do it is I say, look, let's first of all identify all the things you could do. Then let's identify the easiest ones to do first, not for the biggest the biggest yield, but for the easiest win. Because you need a win when you're going outside your comfort zone to reinforce the ver the veracity and the and the and the logic of continuing. And then I say what can we do the easiest? And there's low hanging fruit that you can just change. One little process, and I've seen changing a price. Believe it or not, we did a test on a bunch of things years ago. Uh, we did one thing where $19 out pulled $15 by four times for that particular product. I've also seen a lower price do it. We've seen $4,999 outpull $5,000 by 20%. Well, you can change very easy factors and see really profound impact right away. And so I always say, let's take everything we should do and then let's prioritize them in a hierarchy. It's just like golf. I don't play golf, but if I did, they're short, mid, and long term. Well, you've got to start somewhere. It's like the, you know, how do you eat an elephant one bite at a time? I always say, let's take the easiest low-hanging fruit, let's do that first. Then let's do the next. When we've gone through all of that, if we're right, we should have a lot more capital freed up, a lot more profit cash flow that we can use now to first of all validate some of the more sophisticated either enhancements, replacements, additions. Because what we try to do is I go from I go from low-hanging fruit to optimization, then to maximization, then to multiplication, then to multiplicative, and I'll explain what that means. So low-hanging fruit are things that are just so easy to change that it's shameful not to because they're right under your nose, and a small change could be a big you. Optimization is making an activity the very best it could be. Maximization is the biggest it could be. It's taking it to its full potential. Multiplication is adding other dimensions or replacements or additives. And this multiplicative is I don't let anybody that I ever help do one thing. We build, and I think we've talked about it, what I call a power parthenon. We access the market from many vantage points concurrently so that we get the most amount of upside leverage from our efforts. And it's a it's an integrated process, but it's not really, it may sound intimidating, but you know, it's just, you know, if you had a child and you were teaching them they could learn how to walk, they could learn how to talk, they could learn how to poop, they could learn how to eat, but you're not going to teach them all those at the same time. Right. You're gonna take the easiest thing so that they will succeed and they will feel good about themselves, even though they don't have their full you know intellectual capacity ready, so they'll want to do the next. Yeah.

Bridget Fitzpatrick 24:26

Psychologically, that makes so much sense.

Jay Abraham 24:28

And and so I make it fun. Now, the challenge that people have is they get sucked deeply into status quo. Most people are herd mentality and they do everything the same way as everybody else. And the truth is it's almost impossible to get exponential outcomes from doing what everybody else does. You're gonna get a little bit more, a little bit less. It's

Exponential Growth Through Breakthrough Thinking

Jay Abraham 24:52

almost always incremental. I live in what I call the exponential zone, which is where you're operating at a much higher yield and a much higher uh composite, and you've got geometry working, and everything you do, you're doing with a multiplicative, which means a lot, much more multiplied current and and future result. Everything sets up the next and the next move. It's much more sophisticated and strategic.

Bridget Fitzpatrick 25:19

So one more question, and we'll let you go.

Jay Abraham 25:21

And I hope that wasn't too confusing.

Bridget Fitzpatrick 25:22

No, no, no. It made a lot of sense. And I appreciate the explanation was I I don't want to say it was um dumbed down, but it was it was it was spoken in a way that most people will understand without getting too in the weeds, like you like you say. But it was a great thing. Thank you. Yes, thank you. So one more question. So what separates those companies that have a steady growth over so many years to those that might just skyrocket really quickly exponentially, like you say?

Jay Abraham 25:52

Well, there are a lot of companies that they're they're they they they're stuck, they're stalled, stagnant, or they're suffocating. And it's mostly because they get stuck in status quo existence. You mean uh there was a a very famous, uh very famous management consultant, Peter Drucker, and he used to say if you're not constantly committed to make who you are, what you do, how you do it obsolete, you can make s you can rest sure that your competitors are committed to do it for and to you. You've got to constantly be evolving. And evolving is not incrementalism, it's finding breakthroughs. And I teach breakthrough thinking in a very in a very unique way. Most people think of breakthroughs having to be technologically driven, it has to be AI, it has to be, you know, uh uh having all these SaaS systems, it has to be all these things, and those can be, but you can put breakthrough thinking into everything you do. You can break through thinking how you acquire uh uh buyers, prospects, you can be breakthrough thinking how you sell, you can be breakthrough thinking how you service, break through thinking uh how you resell, breakthrough thinking and how you keep your brand going. And that means thinking, I don't like the word outside the box, but let's use it. Not doing what everybody else does the same way they do it, because that's to me the kiss of death growth-wise. You can't, if you're doing the same thing, you can't really, how are you going to grow doing a little more or a little better or a little worse than everybody else when they're all doing the same thing? The people that really grow, and I've got all this work on breakthrough thinking, they borrow, I mean, I learned this earlier in my career. You borrow success approaches and thinking and strategy and business models and and um and uh and and uh concepts from outside your industry where none of your competitors have ever thought about it. If you think about it, uh some of the greatest breakthroughs of all time came from outside. I've talked about it on many of these interviews, but uh fiber optics wasn't developed by uh telecommunication, it came from aerospace and was borrowed. Rogaine was from uh pimple medicine, Viagra was from from do I have it here? Yeah, Viagra was from I don't have Viagra. I thought I could pull out of Viagra. It was from heart medicine, ballpoint pen, or rule on deodorant was from one or the other, FedEx borrowed what's called the Hub and Spoke Check Clearing System from the Federal Reserve Bank and applied it. And if you borrow success approaches, which is really what I have done all my life, because I've been involved in a thousand industries and I've seen all kinds of higher, better, faster, safer ways to do almost everything. And people don't realize there are now so many micro experts in performance enhancement. There's all kinds of ways to increase performance. Sales performance, trust performance, uh accelerate uh uh the sales cycle, recycle, upsell, and most people don't even study that, but there are people that have studied that and they understand simple shifts that can make each element perform better. It's quite profound.

Final Takeaways And Thanks

Bridget Fitzpatrick 29:12

It really is. Jay Abraham, thank you so much for joining us today. You always come with so much knowledge and so much help for our audience in a few days.

Jay Abraham 29:19

Oh, thank you. I appreciate it.

Announcer 29:27

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