Hidden Multipliers: The New Book for Every WordPress Business Owner

Jason Cohen is a four-time entrepreneur across 25 years. He’s sold two companies, and built two unicorns, including WP Engine.

In this episode of the PublishPress Podcast, he joins Steve to talk about his new book, “Hidden Multipliers” and the ideas behind it.

Jason’s book has a heavy focus on pricing, customer research, profitability, and how companies can make better decisions with the team and budget they already have.

Our chat centers on WordPress businesses, but the underlying lessons apply much more broadly: strategy has to fit the market, the product, and the customer.

We discuss why raising prices is not always the right move, how to think about customer segments in terms of profitability, and why talking directly to customers is still the best way to understand what is really happening.

Watch the episode

Listen to the episode

Show notes for this episode

Key topics

• Jason explains the pricing framework from the book: more for more, less for less, and more for less.
• He argues that WordPress is structurally pushed toward cheap pricing, but that is often a bad fit for small bootstrap companies.
• The WP Engine pricing story shows why the lowest tier matters as an entry point, even when the company is positioning as premium. Erica Douglas suggested lowering the entry price, and customer interviews confirmed that freelancers needed a smaller price jump to sell hosting to their clients.
• Jason emphasizes that customer research is not optional—it is how you validate or invalidate business assumptions before and after building.
• He describes strategy as a set of theories that must be self-consistent, from pricing to product positioning to target market.
• The profit whale idea is used to show how a small number of highly profitable customers can outweigh a long tail of unprofitable ones. He walks through how to analyze the tail carefully before firing customers, starting with whether the problem is actually your fault.
• Jason stresses that customers who seem unprofitable may be revealing missing product features or hidden usage patterns.
• The book is framed as a practical guide for founders who want to improve a business with existing resources rather than pursue venture-scale growth.

Timestamps

• [00:00] – Introduction to Jason Cohen and his new book, Hidden Multipliers
• [01:24] – Counterintuitive pricing strategies: “More for More”, “Less for Less”, and “More for Less”
• [05:04] – Pricing dynamics in the WordPress market
• [09:44] – How WP Engine adjusted its pricing model based on customer feedback
• [13:40] – The importance of conducting deep customer interviews and validating theories
• [20:05] – Balancing product simplicity, power, and pricing trade-offs
• [22:21] – Defining the ideal customer vs. the most profitable customer
• [27:55] – What is the “Profit Whale”? Analyzing customer profitability curves
• [32:14] – Addressing unprofitable customers: when to fix your product vs. firing clients
• [37:30] – Strategies for understanding and reducing customer churn
• [43:40] – Motivation behind writing the book and stepping back from WP Engine
• [46:07] – Growing a business using existing team and budget without taking outside capital
• [50:15] – Overview of Jason Cohen’s podcast format and tackling real-life founder struggles

The PublishPress Podcast

On the PublishPress Podcast, we talk with people interested in WordPress publishing. You’ll hear interviews with publishers who are using WordPress, and also people in the WordPress community.

• YouTube: Watch the episodes on YouTube.
• Spotify: Listen to the podcast on Spotify.
• iTunes: Listen to the podcast on Apple apps.
• Pocket Casts: Listen to the podcast on Pocket Casts.
• Amazon Music: Listen to the podcast on Amazon Music.