Revenue Rascals | Sales Strategies for Business Growth

Michelle is taking the guest seat again, this time looking back on her interview with Jeff Cluff from the Four Fs Podcast. Michelle and Jeff go all the way back to her childhood in Orange County and trace the experiences that eventually shaped her approach to sales, marketing, and revenue growth. Along the way, Michelle explains why sales and marketing have to work as one team, what a fractional C...

If you run an experience-based business, FareHarbor may already be handling your bookings. But a full calendar isn't the same as a revenue system. Michelle argues that most experienced businesses don't have a lead problem—they have revenue leaks throughout the customer journey. Interested leads go cold, happy customers aren't invited back, and years of past buyers sit untouched while o...

This week, Michelle is on the other side of the mic. Instead of hosting, she shares a recent interview from the Acquisition HQ Podcast with host Nathan Byrd. If you're a founder trying to close every deal yourself and wondering how to build a sales team that doesn't fall apart when you leave, this conversation is for you. Michelle breaks down what she looks for when a founder comes to her wanting...

How do you actually scale your sales team without hiring more sales representatives? Michelle is back to challenge one of the biggest assumptions about growing a sales team. She tackles one of the biggest myths in scaling a business: that more revenue requires more headcount. Michelle lays out a five-part framework for building a leaner, more productive sales team by combining strong people, smart...

Michelle tackles another “Revenue Rascals on the Road" segment, where she visits real businesses, buys the experience, and reverse-engineers their revenue strategy in real time. This time, she takes it to iFly indoor skydiving in Ogden, Utah. She gives a full breakdown of how their $79 first-time flight experience offer is a gateway to upsells, return visits, punch passes, group bookings, and cros...

Forget the "profit first" mindset. We’re here to make the case for prosperity first.  Michelle is joined by bestselling author and speaker Randy Gage for a conversation that challenges the current grind model of entrepreneurship. Instead, they bring forward the idea that business leaders need to shift their thinking from profit to prosperity. Randy breaks down his four-quadrant framework for havin...

Michelle kicks off a new segment called "Revenue Rascals on the Road," where she travels town to town hunting down real-world revenue strategies to share with other business owners. In the first installment, Michelle visits an American Legion post in Newport Beach and uncovers the recurring-revenue model behind its surprising $20 filet. Michelle dives into the American Legion post and gives a mast...

Have you ever wondered why your revenue growth lands on the shoulders of just two or three people in your company? Maybe you're asking the wrong question.  Michelle breaks down the "how do I get my team to sell more" mindset and introduces a new way to increase your sales. She introduces the four responsibilities of every employee, whether they carry a sales title or not. Michelle makes the case t...

People are now asking AI for the best businesses to fill their needs. So the question stands: how do you get your business to stand out from the crowd? Michelle dives in with the new reality of today’s customer mindset. People have stopped Googling and have started asking AI for the best companies near them to fix all their problems. And AI hands them the most recommended name it can find. Today,...

Michelle never really clocks out, even on vacation. And her trip to Jackson Hole, Wyoming has become the perfect case study for her new series. Michelle walks through her whitewater rafting trip and shows exactly how her fractional CRO brain works in the wild. She introduces us to Reverse Engineering Revenue, where she experiences a business the same way a customer does, then breaks down what's wo...

If you're a small business owner drowning in follow-up, missed leads, and a dozen disconnected tools, this is your wake-up call.  Michelle sits down with Haplin Milgrom-Hills from GoHighLevel to break down exactly how small businesses can evolve their current strategies. They talk about everything from capturing more leads and closing more sales to how to stop losing money due to slow follow-up. A...

In this final episode of her four-part series, Michelle dives into two of the most often confused terms in business: growth and scaling. While they may sound like the same thing, they actually aren’t. She gives a clear definition of the two terms, as well as a real-life example, to make sure you truly understand the difference and are able to grow and scale your business effectively. Michelle brea...

Getting a customer is only half the battle. Keeping them is where real businesses are built.  Michelle breaks down how the world's biggest companies spend less energy chasing new customers and more energy giving them a reason to keep buying. Using real-world examples, she shows how membership models and recurring revenue systems create predictable income. This method is vastly different than the "...

Now that we know how to build a 10/10 business model, how do we actually get customers? And how do we get them quickly? In this second installment of Michelle’s four-part series on building a local business from the ground up, she lays out a practical framework for landing your first 10 customers. Her step-by-step layout is perfect for anyone who needs to know where to start building their local c...

How do you actually start a 10/10 business? In part one of this four-part series, Michelle runs a live experiment of building a brand new local business from scratch, so you can follow every decision in real time. She uses the example of a senior concierge service; a relationship-based support business that helps older adults stay independent while giving their families peace of mind. Michelle bre...

Small business owners love to talk about sales funnels and marketing hacks, but almost nobody wants to think about the nitty-gritty legal matters — until something goes wrong.  Michelle sits down with business lawyer and longtime friend, Keren de Zwart, to look at the legal side of running a business, making it feel approachable instead of intimidating. They dig into the most common risk areas tha...

Michelle Terpstra sits down with Jason Kramer, founder of Cultivize and self-described CRM whisperer, to talk about the customer relationship management system. They look at why so many companies buy a CRM and then do nothing with it, and how to avoid that.  They unpack what it actually takes to build a process that runs without the founder carrying it all in their head. The case studies in this e...

What happens when the path you’re on no longer feels aligned with the life you want to build?  Michelle sits down with Carmine Del Sordi, founder of Pure & Easy Tea, to talk about how he started over in life at 50 years old. Carmine shares his journey from corporate leadership to entrepreneurship, and how a personal passion evolved into a growing tea brand. For Carmine, building a business was...

What if you could buy a business without spending a single dollar of your own money? Lee Smith has done it over 20 times, and he's here to break down exactly how.  Michelle sits down with Lee Smith, a business acquisition professional. Lee has bought, sold, and invested in over 27 companies across his career, building a portfolio of seven businesses doing $40 million in revenue, all without puttin...

As of early 2026, B2B sales quota attainment is low, with average figures showing that roughly 42% to 46% of reps hit their targets, down from higher averages in previous years.  Michelle Terpstra sits down with Bruno Cignacco, an international business consultant, researcher, university professor, and author with over 30 years of experience. Bruno introduces the concept of the prosperity mindset:...

If you've ever watched a golden sales opportunity walk right out the door, this episode will hit close to home.  Michelle Terpstra tackles one of the most common frustrations for local business owners: team members who are excellent at their jobs, but totally allergic to selling. The issue isn’t your team. It’s the system they’re operating in. Instead of pushing scripts or forcing behavior, Michel...

Imagine this: A landlord three states away is watching water pour through his ceiling. He searches, he calls, and whoever picks up first gets the job.  Michelle opens with that exact scenario to highlight and talk about what it actually costs when your system breaks down at the worst possible moment. Not because your team isn’t capable. Not because your work isn't excellent. But because you built...

What does it take to build a thriving travel advisory business from scratch — twice?  Michelle sits down with Ali Raymer of Picture This Travel, a former high school English teacher who went from organizing student trips to Europe to becoming the sole breadwinner for her family after selling $2.5 million in travel in a single year. Ali breaks down how the modern travel advisory model works—and why...

What if your biggest revenue problem isn’t a sales problem?  In this episode, Michelle sits down with Kurt Uhlir to discuss what’s really holding companies back from scaling their revenue. Kurt argues that one of the biggest and most common problems in companies today is leadership misalignment. As generations grow older, the disconnect between people also scales. He explains what TAM is and how t...

In the age of AI tools, clients think they can replace strategy with a software subscription. They are wrong.  Michelle runs two live roleplays around the most common AI-skeptic objections coaches, consultants, and service providers face right now. Scenario one: the founder who thinks AI outreach replaces sales strategy. Scenario two: the CEO who thinks a churn dashboard replaces a retention syste...