MBA1414 4 Business Expenses You Should Never Go Cheap On

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It's time for Dell Tech Day's annual sales event celebrating our customers with fantastic deals and benefits bring. Perks include Dell rewards, free shipping, premium Support and more. PCs like the Dell 14 with Intel Core Ultra processors will help you do more faster and with a premium suite of monitors and accessories, you can upgrade your whole setup with amazing savings. Visit Dell.com deals. Hey oh. Welcome to the Hundred Doll MBA show. Business truths you can count on every day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholme. I'm also the co founder of the Hundred Dollar mba, a complete business training and community online. And in today's lesson you will learn four expenses you should not go cheap on in your business. As business owners, it's natural to want to cut costs to maximize profitability. We love a good deal, we love a good discount and if we can save some money in some areas, we feel like we're winning. But in today's episode, I'm going to be going through four areas. Four things that you do not want to go cheap on, things you want to spend good money on and get the best of the best when you can. Basically, these four things are areas where you should not feel bad about spending money. You should actually look for ways to invest in those areas as much as possible. I'm going to lay out what those things are and why in today's episode. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. All right, four areas you do not want to go the cheap route. And the first one may sound obvious, but it's not too many. And I'll Explain the number one thing you need to make sure you spend good money on. You get the best thing you can afford that you do not go cheap on is, is your computer, your laptop, your desktop, whatever you work on every day. I cannot stress this enough. Your computer is where you run your business. And this is for those who have an online business, an offline business, a brick and mortar, it doesn't matter. You're doing a lot of your business transactions, marketing, sales, email, all that stuff is happening on your computer. If you have an online business, this is totally non negotiable. You have to spend an hour and get the best machine possible for your money. This is something that you're gonna use every single day. And the better it runs, the more efficient it is, the more secure it is, the easier it is to use. The less time you're gonna be wasting with bugs and issues and viruses and all that stuff, the better everything goes through your computer. This is where the magic happens. You need to make sure you spend top dollar on this. Whether you're a Mac person or a PC person, it doesn't matter. My personal recommendation is to get the best possible in terms of specs so it can last as long as possible. For example, my laptop right now is a 2015 MacBook Pro. But I specced it out to the max specs at the time. So even though it's nearly five years old, it's an early 2015 model. It's still serving me well now. I'm just about ready for an upgrade. I could feel it. I know I see the computer kind of telling me, hey, I'm struggling here. So when I dive into that budget again, I'm going to max out. I do not want to go cheap here. I don't want to go get a notebook or if I'm a Mac person, I'm not going to go with a MacBook Air or try to run my whole business off my iPad. No, why am I doing this to myself? This is an important asset in my business. I need to make sure I invest in it and get the best thing possible. If you're a PC person, you know all the latest PC trends and the PCs that are out there, whether it's a Microsoft laptop, a Surface Pro, a Dell, whatever it is, get the best specs possible that you need for your business, for your needs. If you're, you know, rendering video and doing video editing because you have a YouTube channel, hey, get a great graphics card and get a great processor and plenty of ram. Do not go cheap on this second expense. You do not want to go cheap on your website hosting. Your business lives on your website. Everything gets done through Westfield. You'll find out about you through your website. They buy products and services through your website. They learn about you, they build trust, they get on your email list. So much happens on your website that's critical. You do not want to go cheap when it comes to the hosting of that site. So if you are on WordPress, we highly recommend WP Engine. It's the most expensive, but it's the best website hosting for WordPress. It's the most reliable, it's the fastest and it's expensive for a reason and it's got your back. You know they have great customer service too. If you're looking for a deal, we have it on our resources page over at 100 MBA Net Resources. You could check out WP Engine there. If you're using something like a webflow or Squarespace or a weebly, make sure that you are on their best hosting plan. You want to make sure your uptime, your website's always up, it's fast, it's reliable. No one has time for a slow website, especially on mobile. If they're on their mobile device and they're trying to look something up and it's taking too long to load, they're going to be out of there, they're going to check somebody else, they're going to go back to Google and search somebody else. Your website hosting needs to be amazing and it's a big reason or a big factor to the performance of your website as well as the reliability. So if your website hosting currently is something like, you know, $7 a month, I'm not asking you to cancel it, I'm asking you to question it. Why is it $7? Are you on a shared host? What's their uptime like? Have people experienced issues in the past? Can you afford an outage? For example, we spend $600 on our dedicated server just for our website. For the hundred dollar RMBA, our app, Webinar Ninja. Totally different server, not on WP Engine. It's not a WordPress site, it's an app itself. It works off AWS but just for the 100 MBA. That's how much we spend. Why? Because our uptime and our reliability is so important. Because hey, we have sponsors on the show and the show gets fed through our website and if their show notes, if their link is not available, it's a problem, you know, it's a breach of the agreement that we have with them. They want to make sure that they get as much exposure as possible. And if we're doing down, that's not good news and we don't want to sever any relationships. So look at your own business. What happens if your website's down? Can you afford that? Alright, third thing you do not want to go cheap on and you want to, as much as possible, pay a fair rate when it comes to this area, and that is talent. I've been doing this business thing for over 15 years now. The one thing I know for sure is you get what you pay for. When it comes to the talent, when it comes to your employees, when it comes to your team, you have to pay for good people, for people that have great attitudes, that are hardworking, that are smart, that know what they're doing, that have the skills to do what you need. It's going to cost you, but it's okay. You can grow slowly, make the hires when you can't afford it. But as much as possible, pay them a fair rate, a competitive rate, because you want money off the table. You want them to focus on the work and being loyal to you and to the goal goals of your company and your mission as an organization. And it's hard to do that if they're struggling financially. Okay? Now this is all relative to where they're based or where they're from. So for example, if you're hiring somebody out of the Ukraine, you have to find out what the healthy salary for the job you're hiring for in Ukraine is and maybe up it a little bit. If you're hiring out of the US where in the us Kentucky or San Francisco. There's a big difference there. Okay? Anytime I went cheap on this area on talent, I paid for it. Meaning I made a mistake. And I could have actually saved money by getting somebody who's more talented, that knew their stuff better. They would finish the work faster and therefore I would pay them less overall because if I was paying them hourly, it would take them less hours to get it done. So don't go cheap on the people you hire. Last but not least, the fourth thing you do not want to go cheap on, and this is a controversial one, but I firmly believe in this. And this has been proven to me over and over again in my experience as an entrepreneur, as building businesses, seeing other people build their businesses, seeing my own students in the different programs we've run. Do not go cheap on your design. The way you present yourself on your website, in your marketing materials, on your presentation slides, when you do Webinars or a live event or you're speaking on stage. Your design conveys your value. This is a very highly competitive world now in business and what really differentiates now is how we present ourselves. You know, a lot of people can offer the same services, but brand and design really convey more value. It's a differentiator. It's a value in itself. It conveys value. It conveys the sense of wow, these people are legit. They have invested in the way they look and feel. You can't put a price on that. When somebody visits your website and immediately gets the impression, wow, this is a really well designed site, it's easy on the eyes. This looks like a legit company. In fact, I'm inspired by their design versus going to a website where it looks like somebody knocked it together in five minutes. It looks cookie cutter, it looks cheap and people feel the same way about your products and services. Not a good idea. I'm not saying you have to hire like this world renowned designer. Even if you build it yourself, it's worth looking into getting a quality design template or theme or a service that can provide that for you. There are inexpensive ways to have a good level of quality of design. But to discount design and say I don't need to spend any money or time on designing my website or designing my logo properly or designing my images, you're missing the point. Perception is reality. There's a reason why Apple spends so much money and time on their packaging, on how they present their product on the Apple Store and how nice and neat and clean and minimalist it looks. It portrays a sense of value. It portrays a sense of luxury. People go into the Apple Store feeling, wow, this place feels expensive, so they're not shocked by the prices. There's a reason why the Microsoft Store literally took cues from the Apple Store to convey the same feeling. Design really matters. Does it feel like it's getting really hard to figure out the best way to save for retirement? Fidelity can help you find clarity so you can save the best way for you. With a free personalized plan, goal tracking and timely insights, you'll be set to take on retirement your way. Get started@fidelity.com future expenses charged by your investments and other costs and fees associated with trading or transacting in your account. Apply Fidelity Brokerage Services member NYSE SIPC.

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To wrap up today's lesson, do not go cheap on these four things. Your machine, your computer, your laptop. Whatever you use to run your business, your website. Hosting your site is your business. It's where things get done. It's where people learn about you. Make sure it's hosted with a great provider. Spend a little on it. Number three Talent. When you hire people on your team, whether they're freelancers or consultants or full time employees, make sure they're compensated fairly so you get the best talent possible. Here's a little secret. Great talent. They can work anywhere. They know they're going to be compensated. When you don't have decent compensation, you're going to attract the non talented, the people that can't get jobs anywhere and they're going to learn on the job and break things and waste your time. Trust me, been there. And lastly, your design. Focus on spending a bit of money on really having great design in any way you present. Your product, your website, your packaging, your marketing, your social media presence. It all conveys value. Thank you so much for listening to the $100 NBA show. If you love it here, hit subscribe right now and do me a favor, share this show on social media with your friends and family. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Snapchat, whatever. It just please go ahead and hit a screenshot of what you're listening to right now and share it on social so you can tell other people about this show. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. Since these are important things to spend on. I like to budget them in advance. I like to allocate a certain amount of money for my computer every four or five years for talent, for the design of my website, for the hosting my website. So I'm not surprised by these expenses, no matter how expensive they are. I know this is what I got to spend. I know this is what I got to invest and I kind of like to do them upfront. I pay them in advance for a year if I can. Especially like for the hosting, for example, allocate the funds you need to make the right hires for the right people. And of course design if you need to hire a designer or get a really good template or builder to help you design great things or invest in yourself and take a design course. There's plenty online and they're really affordable so you can afford to get more than one course. It's well worth it. Money well spent. Thank you so much for listening to the $100 MBA show. I'll check you in tomorrow's episode Q and A Wednesday, where I answer a question from one of you, one of our listeners. Thank you so much. I'll see you then. Take.

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