Business By Design

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Your happiest clients are often your best source of new business, yet most owners leave referrals to chance. Mena and I walk through a referral engine framework: earn advocacy first, ask at the right moment, and make the introduction low risk.

• You can buy attention, but you have to earn advocacy. Fyre Festival's influencer spend couldn't cover for a promise it never delivered
• The right time to ask is straight after a client acknowledges the value they've received. Swap "do you know anyone?" for a question tied to the specific problem you just solved
• Referring is risky for the client, so position introductions as a no-obligation second opinion, make the process simple, and commit to treating every referral with the same respect
• If you're working out how to get consistent leads for your business, start with the clients you've already delighted. A pricing strategy for small business that protects margin funds the experience people talk about, while discounting trains clients to wait for a sale

Chapters

00:00 - Why customer advocacy needs a system
 02:10 - Buying attention vs earning advocacy: Fyre Festival
 04:32 - The right moment to ask for a referral
 07:24 - A better question than "do you know anyone?"
 09:46 - Why referrals feel risky, and how to reduce that risk
 14:34 - Pricing power and the advocacy flywheel
 18:10 - Five questions to test your advocacy system
 21:22 - Our 200th episode, and what's next: the Engine pillar

References

• Ep 199: Why are your best customers quietly leaving? 
• Ep 198: Trust is the real thing your customer is buying 
• Ep 197: Pricing is a system, not a sticker 
• Ep 196: Pricing strategy: are you a price maker or a price taker? 

If this episode resonated with you, please leave a rating on your favourite podcast platform. It helps us reach more incredible listeners like you. Thank you for being a part of the journey!

Click here to subscribe to our weekly email.

Work with Mena & Stuart's team: At ProSolution Private Clients we encourage clients to adopt a holistic and evidence-based approach when making financial decisions. Visit our website.

Follow us: Stuart: Twitter/X and LinkedIn.  Mena: LinkedIn

IMPORTANT: This podcast provides general information about finance, taxes, and credit. This means that the content does not consider your specific objectives, financial situation, or needs. It is crucial for you to assess whether the information is suitable for your circumstances before taking any actions based on it. If you find yourself uncertain about the relevance or your specific needs, it is advisable to seek advice from a licensed and trustworthy professional.

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Here's the uncomfortable truth: by the time a customer tells you they're leaving, you're usually too late to do anything about it. The decision was made months earlier, when they quietly began questioning the value; nobody noticed, and the cancellation email just makes you the last to know. 

In this final episode of the Value series, Stuart and Mena reframe churn as the most honest feedback your business receives, if you're willing to understand what's behind it.

Mena explains why retention starts at onboarding, not the renewal conversation, with the goal being to make value visible as fast as possible, closing the gap where doubt creeps in (Canva as the example). 

Stuart offers four lenses for reading every departure: value, trust, fit, and friction, using MoviePass to show how a single churn number can hide several problems at once. Mena insists each category needs a named owner (with Ritz-Carlton's $2,000 staff discretion showing what real authority looks like).

Stuart then explores when losing customers is healthy: Nike's wholesale pullback and its telling reversal, and Mena covers how to end relationships respectfully, protecting your reputation. 

If this episode resonated with you, please leave a rating on your favourite podcast platform. It helps us reach more incredible listeners like you. Thank you for being a part of the journey!

Click here to subscribe to our weekly email.

Work with Mena & Stuart's team: At ProSolution Private Clients we encourage clients to adopt a holistic and evidence-based approach when making financial decisions. Visit our website.

Follow us: Stuart: Twitter/X and LinkedIn.  Mena: LinkedIn

IMPORTANT: This podcast provides general information about finance, taxes, and credit. This means that the content does not consider your specific objectives, financial situation, or needs. It is crucial for you to assess whether the information is suitable for your circumstances before taking any actions based on it. If you find yourself uncertain about the relevance or your specific needs, it is advisable to seek advice from a licensed and trustworthy professional.

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Every time someone buys from you, they're taking a risk: will you do what you promised? Trust is what gives them the confidence to proceed, and without it, a great product, sensible pricing, and sharp marketing still won't close the sale. This episode unpacks how trust is built, borrowed, and lost.

Mena explains why price and frequency determine how much trust a purchase requires: a $4 coffee versus a $40,000 renovation, and why your sales process must reflect the risk the customer feels (Guzman y Gomez versus a Koala mattress). 

Stuart introduces the trust equation: credibility, reliability, and intimacy, divided by self-interest, with Vanguard's ownership structure as a striking example of how low self-interest can be built into the model rather than merely claimed.

Mena draws the line between borrowed credibility, which opens the door, and earned trust, built through direct experience and the idea of a "trust account" where deposits and withdrawals are never equal. 

Stuart offers four practical ways to make it easier for customers to trust you, and Mena connects consistency back to your systems and why delivering well 80% of the time still leaves customers worrying.

If this episode resonated with you, please leave a rating on your favourite podcast platform. It helps us reach more incredible listeners like you. Thank you for being a part of the journey!

Click here to subscribe to our weekly email.

Work with Mena & Stuart's team: At ProSolution Private Clients we encourage clients to adopt a holistic and evidence-based approach when making financial decisions. Visit our website.

Follow us: Stuart: Twitter/X and LinkedIn.  Mena: LinkedIn

IMPORTANT: This podcast provides general information about finance, taxes, and credit. This means that the content does not consider your specific objectives, financial situation, or needs. It is crucial for you to assess whether the information is suitable for your circumstances before taking any actions based on it. If you find yourself uncertain about the relevance or your specific needs, it is advisable to seek advice from a licensed and trustworthy professional.

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Two businesses can charge the same price today and be on opposite margin trajectories five years from now, purely because of the architecture sitting underneath that number. One gets more profitable as it grows; the other gets squeezed with every new customer. This episode is about designing that architecture on purpose.

Mena starts with discounting as a diagnostic: persistent discounting isn't a sales problem but a signal pointing at one of three causes, and J.C. Penney's disastrous 2012 "fair and square" experiment shows why you can't simply switch off years of trained customer behaviour. Stuart then unpacks the traps of unit pricing, the default model most owners fall into without choosing it, from the billable hour that punishes efficiency to the petrol-station race no one wins on quality.

Mena lays out the real choice between fixed, tiered and modular pricing (with Australia Post, Canva and IKEA as clean examples), and Stuart explains why scope is the boundary that makes any of them work. Finally, Mena drives home the cost base as a non-negotiable floor, using Porter Davis Homes' collapse under fixed-price contracts as the cautionary tale. Closes with four steps to build your own pricing system.

If this episode resonated with you, please leave a rating on your favourite podcast platform. It helps us reach more incredible listeners like you. Thank you for being a part of the journey!

Click here to subscribe to our weekly email.

Work with Mena & Stuart's team: At ProSolution Private Clients we encourage clients to adopt a holistic and evidence-based approach when making financial decisions. Visit our website.

Follow us: Stuart: Twitter/X and LinkedIn.  Mena: LinkedIn

IMPORTANT: This podcast provides general information about finance, taxes, and credit. This means that the content does not consider your specific objectives, financial situation, or needs. It is crucial for you to assess whether the information is suitable for your circumstances before taking any actions based on it. If you find yourself uncertain about the relevance or your specific needs, it is advisable to seek advice from a licensed and trustworthy professional.

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Price is the most powerful profit lever most business owners never think about. In this episode, Mena and I break down the pricing strategy question that matters most: are you a price maker or a price taker?

• A modest price rise can lift profit far more than an equivalent cost cut or volume increase, since it drops straight to the bottom line and improves your margin without touching your cost base
• The value map: plot your competitors on price against perceived value to see whether your market is commoditised or genuinely open to premium pricing, and where the white space sits
• If you're a price taker, there are only two real levers, deliver more value than the market expects, or build a leaner engine so you can deliver at a lower cost
• Price is a signal customers read before they've experienced anything. Price too low and the market assumes the quality is low too, price too high without anything to back it up and you're exposed

Chapters
 00:16 - Why pricing is the most powerful lever on profit
 02:29 - Building the value map: price makers versus price takers
 06:21 - What to do if you land in the price taker camp
 10:15 - Price as a signal: what buyers read into it before they buy
 12:43 - When value based pricing tips into unfair pricing
 17:55 - This week's homework: map your own position

Reference links
 Last week's episode on building a brand promise is referenced directly at the open, and next week's episode on pricing models is flagged at the close. Neither title nor link is confirmed in the transcript itself, so whoever publishes this should drop in the actual links rather than me guessing at either title.

If this episode resonated with you, please leave a rating on your favourite podcast platform. It helps us reach more incredible listeners like you. Thank you for being a part of the journey!

Click here to subscribe to our weekly email.

Work with Mena & Stuart's team: At ProSolution Private Clients we encourage clients to adopt a holistic and evidence-based approach when making financial decisions. Visit our website.

Follow us: Stuart: Twitter/X and LinkedIn.  Mena: LinkedIn

IMPORTANT: This podcast provides general information about finance, taxes, and credit. This means that the content does not consider your specific objectives, financial situation, or needs. It is crucial for you to assess whether the information is suitable for your circumstances before taking any actions based on it. If you find yourself uncertain about the relevance or your specific needs, it is advisable to seek advice from a licensed and trustworthy professional.

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Most owners sell backwards. You built the thing, so you know every feature and inclusion, and that's exactly what comes out of your mouth when you sell it, while the customer's eyes glaze over. 

They were never buying a spec sheet; they were buying a different version of their life. Sell the feature, and you compete on the feature; someone will always build it cheaper. Sell the outcome, and prove it, and price becomes the last objection, not the first.

Mena breaks down the three layers every customer buys at once: functional, emotional, and social value using Canva as the case study, and why a strong offer hits all three by design. 

Stuart shows how to compress that into a Core Promise: one sentence, in the customer's own words, that they could repeat without you (think Domino's, Bunnings, FedEx) plus why the proof underneath the promise is where businesses fall.

Then the part owners skip: quantifying the cost of inaction, with Blockbuster's ten-year compounding mistake as the warning. 

Finally, the three forms of proof mechanism- social proof, guarantee, and a FedEx masterclass that ties it all together. Closes with a four-part self-audit.

If this episode resonated with you, please leave a rating on your favourite podcast platform. It helps us reach more incredible listeners like you. Thank you for being a part of the journey!

Click here to subscribe to our weekly email.

Work with Mena & Stuart's team: At ProSolution Private Clients we encourage clients to adopt a holistic and evidence-based approach when making financial decisions. Visit our website.

Follow us: Stuart: Twitter/X and LinkedIn.  Mena: LinkedIn

IMPORTANT: This podcast provides general information about finance, taxes, and credit. This means that the content does not consider your specific objectives, financial situation, or needs. It is crucial for you to assess whether the information is suitable for your circumstances before taking any actions based on it. If you find yourself uncertain about the relevance or your specific needs, it is advisable to seek advice from a licensed and trustworthy professional.

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Before you can test whether people will pay, you need to know whose "yes" you're actually chasing, and most owners get this wrong in a very specific way. 

In this Value deep dive, Stuart and Mena introduce reverse-engineering the yes: start from the moment someone buys, then work backwards to the buyer, the outcome, and the trigger that got them there.

Mena explains why "business owners" or "SMEs" isn't a target customer at all, just a category, using Peloton, Chewy, and Lululemon to show how precision changes everything from price to product. 

The test: if your customer description could be swapped into a competitor's marketing and still make sense, it's too broad. Stuart reframes the real buyer around the progress they're trying to make: the barrister who sells career risk-reduction, the Amex Platinum buyer who's buying status, not what your product does.

Then the three-part filter for a genuine customer: a live trigger (Ring's fear event versus Cleardocs' life-stage moment), constraints you design around (Planet Fitness deleting the contract), and the capacity, not just desire to pay (Tesla redesigning its buyer as price fell). Plus why being deliberate about who you're not for, à la Hermès and Costco, is a competitive advantage.

If this episode resonated with you, please leave a rating on your favourite podcast platform. It helps us reach more incredible listeners like you. Thank you for being a part of the journey!

Click here to subscribe to our weekly email.

Work with Mena & Stuart's team: At ProSolution Private Clients we encourage clients to adopt a holistic and evidence-based approach when making financial decisions. Visit our website.

Follow us: Stuart: Twitter/X and LinkedIn.  Mena: LinkedIn

IMPORTANT: This podcast provides general information about finance, taxes, and credit. This means that the content does not consider your specific objectives, financial situation, or needs. It is crucial for you to assess whether the information is suitable for your circumstances before taking any actions based on it. If you find yourself uncertain about the relevance or your specific needs, it is advisable to seek advice from a licensed and trustworthy professional.

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Founders love to scale, but scaling before anyone has paid a real price for a real outcome simply converts a slow failure into a fast, expensive one.

In this episode, the first in a deep dive on Value, Stuart names the trap: scaling doesn't fix a weak offer; it just gives that weak offer more customers, more overhead, and more cash to burn.

Mena draws the crucial line between attention and demand. Compliments, engagement, and "I'd definitely buy that" are evidence of interest, not a sale. The only test that matters is whether someone has actually paid, in cash, at or near your target price, and heavy discounting is itself a signal the offer isn't yet standing on its own.

Stuart offers a sharp three-way diagnostic for when an offer isn't landing: is the problem the segment, the offer, or the message?, illustrated with Segway, Quibi, and early Dropbox. 

Mena explains how to read the data rather than your feelings, and Stuart lays out fast, cheap tests you can run this month, from pre-selling to price testing.

The gate before you scale: paid customers, at the price the business actually needs.

If this episode resonated with you, please leave a rating on your favourite podcast platform. It helps us reach more incredible listeners like you. Thank you for being a part of the journey!

Click here to subscribe to our weekly email.

Work with Mena & Stuart's team: At ProSolution Private Clients we encourage clients to adopt a holistic and evidence-based approach when making financial decisions. Visit our website.

Follow us: Stuart: Twitter/X and LinkedIn.  Mena: LinkedIn

IMPORTANT: This podcast provides general information about finance, taxes, and credit. This means that the content does not consider your specific objectives, financial situation, or needs. It is crucial for you to assess whether the information is suitable for your circumstances before taking any actions based on it. If you find yourself uncertain about the relevance or your specific needs, it is advisable to seek advice from a licensed and trustworthy professional.

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Here's the challenge Stuart opens with: describe your business in four honest sentences, one each for why customers pay, how you deliver profitably, how the right people find you, and how quality holds as you grow.

Most owners can talk about their business for an hour but can't compress it into four sentences that survive scrutiny, and that vagueness is itself the problem. This isn't an elevator pitch; it's a decision filter that reveals where you're genuinely strong and where you're quietly weak.

Mena walks through the four questions in plain language, warning that "we work hard" is not an engine answer, while Stuart uses Apple as a worked example of what clarity actually looks like. The gap between your four sentences and Apple's is precisely the work to be done.

Crucially, the discipline is sequencing, not simultaneous effort: score each sentence, find the weakest, and make it your ninety-day project while the others sit in maintenance. Stuart names the expensive mistake of scaling reach before value and engine are solid, which just spreads weakness faster, and Mena shows how the sentences become a tool for saying no.

The goal isn't four polished sentences. It's a business that compounds by design.

If this episode resonated with you, please leave a rating on your favourite podcast platform. It helps us reach more incredible listeners like you. Thank you for being a part of the journey!

Click here to subscribe to our weekly email.

Work with Mena & Stuart's team: At ProSolution Private Clients we encourage clients to adopt a holistic and evidence-based approach when making financial decisions. Visit our website.

Follow us: Stuart: Twitter/X and LinkedIn.  Mena: LinkedIn

IMPORTANT: This podcast provides general information about finance, taxes, and credit. This means that the content does not consider your specific objectives, financial situation, or needs. It is crucial for you to assess whether the information is suitable for your circumstances before taking any actions based on it. If you find yourself uncertain about the relevance or your specific needs, it is advisable to seek advice from a licensed and trustworthy professional.

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The three "killers" thin margins, poor reach, and weak demand- tell you what's failing, but not what to build. In this episode, Stuart and Mena introduce VERT: Value, Engine, Reach, and Team the operating system underneath those symptoms, and the four things you actually control. By the end, you'll have a single model to run every business decision through, instead of juggling forty disconnected problems.

Mena maps the four pillars onto the three killers: margins sit at the intersection of Value (what you can charge) and Engine (what it costs to deliver); Reach gets you chosen but can't manufacture demand; and Team touches everything, holding the whole system together. Stuart then explains why VERT is a flywheel, not a checklist, each pillar reinforcing the next, so momentum comes from consistent pressure on the right point rather than one dramatic push across everything.

Mena shares the green flags and red flags for spotting your weakest pillar, and the misdiagnosis trap, where the symptom and cause live in different pillars. Stuart closes with the four-bucket test: a two-question filter for every decision, and a rule to focus your weakest pillar for ninety days while the rest run in maintenance mode.

If this episode resonated with you, please leave a rating on your favourite podcast platform. It helps us reach more incredible listeners like you. Thank you for being a part of the journey!

Click here to subscribe to our weekly email.

Work with Mena & Stuart's team: At ProSolution Private Clients we encourage clients to adopt a holistic and evidence-based approach when making financial decisions. Visit our website.

Follow us: Stuart: Twitter/X and LinkedIn.  Mena: LinkedIn

IMPORTANT: This podcast provides general information about finance, taxes, and credit. This means that the content does not consider your specific objectives, financial situation, or needs. It is crucial for you to assess whether the information is suitable for your circumstances before taking any actions based on it. If you find yourself uncertain about the relevance or your specific needs, it is advisable to seek advice from a licensed and trustworthy professional.