Hidden Revenue. Ron Shank on Finding Money Your Business Already Has

About This Blog

For twenty years, Ron Shank charged the same hourly rate for his web design work. He started at thirty dollars an hour, matching a couple of stay-at-home moms doing similar work down the street from his shop in Savannah, Tennessee.

A mentor asked him a simple question that changed everything. Was his work better or worse than theirs? Ron did not hesitate. His work was vastly better. Then why, his mentor asked, was he still charging the same price as everyone else on the block?

In this episode of Fountain of Vitality, host LaMont Leavitt sits down with Ron Shank, owner of Optimus Media and a certified Rapid Results Profit Coach, to talk through where hidden revenue actually comes from inside a business that already exists.

 The Phone Call Nobody Makes   

Ron's first strategy has nothing to do with new customers. It starts with the ones a business already has. He tells owners to go through their existing customer list and ask a simple question. Who has not purchased in a while, and why not.

Most business owners skip this step because picking up the phone feels old fashioned in a world of email blasts and social posts. Ron calls it a goldmine hiding in plain sight, and the only real cost involved is a conversation someone has to be willing to start.

Earning Trust With Every Turn  

One of Ron's favorite client stories involves a mechanic who could not explain what made his shop different from every other repair shop in town. Ron had his team call a handful of the mechanic's customers and ask one question. Why do you choose us over the competition down the road?

The answer was trust. The mechanic walked the shop floor, talked to customers directly, and handed over a full diagnostic report every single time. Once he understood that was his real edge, he built his messaging around it and started reaching the customers who had quietly drifted away.

The Client Who Turned It Around  

Ron describes one company that came to him losing 50,000 dollars a month. The owner told him she needed help but could not afford it. Ron took her on anyway because helping businesses is the reason he does this work in the first place.

He traces the turnaround back to something less obvious than pricing. He and the owner tracked her key performance indicators closely enough to see which parts of the business were actually moving results, then had frank conversations about which roles fit which people. Within a month and a half, the bleeding stopped. She was profitable within three months and expanded into the building next door by the six month mark. Today that same business brings in 120,000 dollars a month, a complete reversal from where it started.

Raise Your Prices Already  

Ron's own pricing story mirrors the advice he gives clients now. After his mentor pushed him past thirty dollars an hour, he moved up in stages, first to fifty, then seventy five, then ninety five, before eventually switching to flat project pricing entirely instead of billing by the hour.

Years later, he tripled his rates outright after two decades of holding steady. He offered an introductory window at double the old rate before the full increase took effect, and he did not lose a single client through the entire change.

Know Exactly Who You Serve  

Ron pushes every client to get painfully specific about who they serve. He tells the story of a gut health expert who described her ideal customer as anybody who poops, before narrowing it down to people struggling with constipation or the opposite problem entirely.

The specificity felt uncomfortable to her at first. Ron says that discomfort is exactly the point. Vague targeting produces vague marketing, and vague marketing rarely reaches anyone at all, no matter how much money gets spent behind it.

The Sweet Spot in Your Content  

Ron has a rule of thumb for social media that most business owners get backwards. About sixty percent of what a business posts should be pure information, useful content people can actually apply. Another twenty percent should be personal, the staff, the story, the things that make a brand feel human rather than a logo.

Business owners often assume nobody cares about their personal side of things. Ron has found the opposite to be true. People want to know who they are buying from, and the businesses willing to share that tend to be the ones people remember.

Training Your Newest, Dumbest Employee  

Ron does not treat AI as a shortcut. He describes it as the newest employee on staff, cheap, fast, eager, and prone to serious mistakes if left unsupervised. Left untrained, AI tools scan the average advice already sitting on the internet and hand back an average answer in return.

He has seen the downside firsthand. One company gave its AI system too much access and lost its entire database. His advice is to train AI the way you would train any new hire, in small steps, with real oversight, before handing over anything that actually matters.

Which Plate Moves the Needle  

Most business owners feel like they are juggling eight plates at once, and Ron says that feeling is usually accurate. The mistake is treating every plate as equally urgent when only a few of them actually move the business forward.

His advice is to ask which plate is wobbling hardest and which one moves the business closest to its goal. Not everything needs to happen this quarter, and postponing the wrong things on purpose is a strategy, not a failure to keep up.

Becoming a Real Business Owner  

Ron says the hardest transition for most entrepreneurs is not building the business. It is learning to run it instead of being it. He points to what he calls the rule of three. Everything takes three times longer, costs three times more, and demands three times the effort a founder originally expected going in.

His advice for making the jump is to be unglamorous. Prepare before you leap, find a mentor who has already done it, and get your spouse on board before you take the risk together. Most people, he says, are more generous with advice than we expect. A short conversation over lunch with someone who has already built a business can save months of expensive trial and error.

Be Brave Enough to Jump  

Ron speaks from experience about the anxiety of staying somewhere that no longer fits. He describes the dread he used to feel every Sunday night before a corporate week he was already tired of, a physical weight he carried until the day he finally gave notice. He remembers telling his wife he felt lighter almost immediately.

His closing advice for anyone circling a decision is to stop rehearsing the worst case scenario in advance. Ask a different question instead. What if your dreams do come true?

Key Takeaways

• The fastest new revenue is often an old customer you have not called in months.

• A short, honest phone call beats another marketing campaign more often than owners expect.

• Customers rarely leave over price. They leave when the value is never explained.

• Small, well communicated price increases lose far fewer customers than most owners fear.

• Every business needs a clear answer for why a customer should choose it over the shop next door.

• AI only becomes useful after someone takes the time to train it properly.

• Knowing your exact customer, not a rough demographic, is what makes messaging land.

• Becoming a business owner rather than staying an entrepreneur usually takes three times longer than planned.

• Income, independence, and impact are the three reasons most people start a business in the first place.

Learn more about Ron Shank's coaching at ronshank.com, download his free book at shankcoaching.com, or visit his web design company at Optimus Media.

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