The REAL Reason Why Your Business Is Not Growing

Dan Lok Show

Dan Lok

Careers, Management, Entrepreneurship, Business

4.8 • 826 Ratings

🗓️ 9 June 2025

⏱️ 11 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Most entrepreneurs unknowingly price themselves into failure. They’re not premium enough to charge top dollar… but not cheap enough to compete on volume either. That’s called Death by the Middle — and it’s the worst place to be in business.

In this episode, Dan Lok reveals why trying to appeal to “everyone” is a recipe for disaster, and how choosing the wrong pricing strategy can destroy your margins, your growth potential, and even your freedom.

You'll learn:

Why being stuck in the middle is not a coincidence — it's a decision

How Walmart and other giants use loss leader tactics to wipe out smaller players

Why high margins mean fewer headaches, better clients, and sustainable growth

How Dan scaled to hundreds of millions without outside investors — and how you can do the same

Whether you're selling products or services, this is a wake-up call to get clear on your positioning — and claim your place at the top or bottom. But never the middle.

Transcript

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0:00.0	So let's talk about death by the middle.
0:17.5	There are only two same options with regard to price and position. Either you want to be the
0:23.9	Rose Royce or you want to be like Toyota. What you don't want in terms of what we do is kind of
0:32.3	be stuck in the middle. Death by the middle. Problem with middle is this. You are too expensive to be cheap, and you're too cheap to be expensive.
0:44.7	Does that make sense?
0:47.2	You're kind of like you're not expensive, but you're not cheap either.
0:51.8	You don't have the advantages of either one.
0:53.8	You don't have the advantages of higher margins, and you don't have the advantages of either one. You don't have the advantages of high margins.
0:56.4	And you don't have the advantages of high volume.
0:59.0	It's death by the middle.
1:00.1	But that's, to me, it's not a sustainable strategy for me.
1:03.5	I have chosen in my life all these years in business, I'm not a Walmart.
1:09.5	I've chosen that's not where I want to be.
1:12.6	Like I'm not interested in doing massive volume and all that.
1:15.6	I'm just not interested.
1:17.6	So if you have a sustainable price advantage like Walmart
1:20.6	that don't mind handling huge volume, that's okay.
1:23.6	Is it a possible model that you could pursue?
1:25.6	Yes, I'm just saying, right?
1:28.7	It's not a model that I want personally.
1:31.6	Other people can pursue that model, good for them, not for me.
1:34.5	It's not the model that I want.
	...

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