MBA1086 The Best Investments You Can Make in Your Business

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Hey oh. Welcome to the Hundred Dollar MBA show, the business podcast that gives you business lessons you can use every single day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of $100 MBA, a complete business training and community online. And in today's lesson, you will learn the best investments you can make in your business. In today's lesson, I'm going to share with you my top three investments that you can make in terms of your return on investment. What are the best things you can spend your money on to grow your business to be more profitable and ensure greater success for not only you, but also everybody that helps you build the business with you. All your employees, your staff, even your freelancers. When you start the business, you're getting some traction. But once you start making some sales, you gotta start reinvesting in your business. So in today's lesson, I wanna share with you three things that I find to be the best investments you can make. Ones you really can't go wrong if you pay attention. I know when I was getting started I just didn't know what I should focus on. How can I make sure my business is growing? Well, these three things are the things you can focus on, invest in and see the fruits of your labor. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. So what are the best investments you can make in your business today? Now, there's a few criteria here. First, there's gotta be a way to invest, even if it's a small amount. So even if you just have $100 to invest every month, then one of these strategies will help you do that. Number two, this investment must give you a Tangible and clear return on investment. And number three, you have to have some options when it comes to making these investments. It's gotta be easy to implement. All right, so let's get started with option number one. And for me, one of the best investments you can make in your business is any form of marketing. Marketing is the bloodline of your business. If people don't know who you are, what you do, what value can convey to them, you're just not going to make it. This is especially true for an online business and especially true for a non physical product, like a digital product, like a course or a software. Word of mouth is a lot harder, and brand recognition is a lot harder when it's not a physical item, like a piece of clothing or a car, for example, where you could see it in a parking lot or in somebody's driveway. There are millions upon millions of websites out there. And if you can't get people to know who you are and get to your website, then it's just a matter of time before you go out of business. That's just the truth. And that's the harsh truth I realized when I got started. So you gotta keep marketing in your business. So even if you just have $100 to spend, you could spend $100 to get somebody to help you edit a blog post that can help you market your website. You can run some paid advertising through Facebook or Google AdWords. You can roll up your sleeves and even run a webinar. This won't cost you any money other than the webinar software, and they'll be less than $100 for the first month. You need to invest in getting people to understand who you are. Marketing is the chance for you to build trust, to allow people to see that you can deliver on your promise, that you can actually deliver a solution to their needs. For me, I'm always trying to find ways to market on a budget, whether it's being a guest on other people's podcast, whether it's writing blog posts, whether it's running an affiliate program, whether it's doing joint webinars, whatever it is, there's some way to market your business without having to drop, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars. Now, obviously, the more money you can invest in the marketing, the better. And you want to be smart about it. You want to test out different marketing avenues, different options before you go and spend your whole marketing budget on a marketing option like Facebook ads. You know, don't spend your whole annual marketing budget on a billboard outside of Yankee Stadium. You Want to diversify your marketing efforts and invest in different ways of marketing? Now, we got tons of episodes on ways you can market your business for free for low cost. You could check out our archives to see ways to market your business and reinvest in your business with marketing. All right, option number two, and this one, a lot of people overlook or they don't even consider at all. And that's investing in anything that improves the job satisfaction for your team. Do you know that one of the top ways companies waste their money is through turnover? Turnover is when you lose employees. When you have to go and try to hire and replace employees constantly. This costs a lot of money. One, it costs a lot of money because you have to, you know, post for the job interview for the job. That's time spent. You got to train this person. You got to get them up to speed. You got to make sure they're good, culture fit. You got to get them, you know, a part of the team. You got to give them all the work materials, the software, the hardware, all that kind of stuff. So there's a lot of investment that happens every time you make a hire. So you want to keep your hires for as long as possible. This is something that Nicole and I take very seriously. We love the people that we bring on board, and we want to keep them as long as possible. We want to make sure that they're satisfied, they're being challenged, that they're happy. So if you can invest in ways for them to improve their skills, like pay for some courses, books, or ways for them to improve, that's going to keep them happy. If it's some sort of benefit or perk, like a massage once a month, that could keep them happy. Some people just stay for the perks, even as simple as paying them a little bit more or giving them some sort of increment that they ask for or that you just give to them, that's a great investment to keep those people happy. Most recruiters or recruitment firms, they charge 10 to 20% of an annual salary. So you can pay up to $20,000 for a new hire to get a new hire in the door. That doesn't include all the training you're gonna have to do, that's just $20,000 just to get somebody who's qualified for the job. If you have somebody at a salary at a hundred K, so keeping somebody by giving them an extra five is going to save you 15 grand. Another way you can invest in your team to make sure that they're cohesive. They like Working together, they enjoy the work environment and they just love being part of your organization. Is a company retreat. A lot of people think this is a waste of money. I think it's an absolute great investment. And any company that does a company retreat knows the value of it. Some people think that, oh, you're just running a company retreat because it's just a way you can ride off a vacation. No, if you're running a company retreat as the CEO, as the company founders, as the organizers of this retreat, it's a ton of work. It takes nearly a year to plan. And the whole time you're there, you're facilitating, you're working, you're making sure everybody's happy. You're going to need a vacation after the retreat. But it's a fantastic investment because your team enjoys being on the team. They have great memories with you, and they see that you care about them beyond just their job description. All right, investment option number three. And this is the lowest cost investment, but it can have the most impact. And I alluded to it before, but it's books. I think books are one of the best investments possible. There are books that I've read that have cost me $10 that have completely changed the way I do business, changed my mindset, made me a better entrepreneur. And if I had to put a dollar amount to that investment, it's quite possible. I not only 10x, but maybe 50x to my investment within a month. Books have that kind of ability to really guide you and give you examples from somebody else's experience. I personally love biographies. I think biographies are a great way to learn how the experts do it, what they had to go through and what they had to, you know, achieve or accomplish in order to get to the place that you want to get to. Sometimes it's not a how to. Sometimes it's just changing the way you see the world or see business or see a concept in business. That's why I'm a big believer in books and how they can shape the way you are as a business person. There is no reason why you can't read one book a month. It's going to cost you $10, nearly the price of a McDonald's meal. A and if you spend 10, 15 minutes reading before you go to bed, you could definitely read a book a month, giving you the opportunity to read 12 books a year. Now, I shared with you the last couple of years, I've been challenging myself to read up to 50 books a year. I've throttled back since then because you know, that's a lot of reading, but I definitely, I'm hitting the 20 to 25 mark every year and I'm very, very happy about that. And I feel like the number one influencer for me because I get a great amount of experience through other people's experiences. I learn what it takes to be where I want to be. It also teaches me lessons, hard lessons from the mistakes that others have made, mistakes that I can avoid. So getting yourself into reading is really a great investment. And that also includes, you know, being willing to buy books for your team, for your employees. And I think books are a great gift. They're absolutely awesome. Lifelock how can I help? 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So as you can see, you have options when it comes to investing in your business. It doesn't have to be expensive, it doesn't have to be costly. And you can do it right now. In fact, I encourage you to take action and invest in your business right now, even if that means picking up a book. Take a look at all our must read episodes here on the show. You can just look at our list of episodes. Check out the must read titled ones. These are books that I've read that have greatly impacted me, influenced me as an entrepreneur. They only make the show. They only are labeled must read unless they're great. So you know that you're going to get a good read if you pick up one of the books. So do it. Strike while the iron is hot. That's it for me today guys. But thank you so much for listening to the $100 NBA show. If you love what you hear, drop us an itunes rating and review. We greatly appreciate hearing what you think of the show. And before I go, I want to leave you with this. A small thing that we do in our team to support our team in their wins, in their success, in their progress is a virtual pizza party. We do this with our customer service team so when they hit their customer service goals, their satisfaction rating for the month, us, the company, we pay for a pizza party for them. Now, even though we run a remote team, everybody's given the money to buy a pizza for their family at home. A cold drink, you know, and we all just take pictures or sometimes we just get on video and. And have a virtual pizza party. Now, the whole thing doesn't cost that much, you know, a couple hundred dollars, but the impact is incredible. It makes everybody feel valued, feel appreciated, and it creates a sense of camaraderie in the team because they all work together to reach that goal and enjoy the pizza. All right, thank you so much for listening to the $100BA show. I'll check you in tomorrow's episode of free ride Friday. I'll see you then. Take care. USAA knows dynamic duos can save the day like superheroes and sidekicks or auto and home insurance. With usaa, you can bundle your auto and home and save up to 10%. Tap the banner to learn more and get a'@usaa.com bundle restrictions apply.