MBA1427 5 Takeaways From SaaStock Aus 2019 + Free Ride Friday

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All right, let's jump into today's episode. Hey O. Welcome to the Hundred Dollar MBA Show. Your business gets better by the minute every 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 the $100 MBA, a complete business training and community online. And in today's lesson I'll be sharing my five takeaways from SaaS Stock Australia 2019. I had the honor and the pleasure to be one of the speakers over at SAS Talk Australia 2019. What a great conference to attend. SASDOC is one of the largest brands in SaaS conferences. Their main conference is in Dublin in October every year. But they've been branching out and going to major cities like Sydney and this is their second time around in Australia. And it's such a great conference. If you're selling a software as a service, I highly recommend you check them out. But even if you're not in the SaaS world, there are five takeaways I want to share with you that I learned from attending this conference. What's great about this conference is that everybody is doing something. They're building their business, whether they just are getting started or have been around for decades. The sessions, the discussions, the whole vibe is very productive and thought provoking. And I want to share with you the the five things I got out of it so you can apply it to your life, to your business, to your perspective. So let's get into it, let's get down to business. Let's jump right into it. My first takeaway when it comes to what I got out of SaaS Talk Australia was everybody is dealing with something. We all think everybody else is rocking and rolling, are killing it in their business. They're doing so much better than us. And it may be true where they're making more revenue or they have more customers or users. Well, the thing I learned through the discussions, every single person I spoke to at the conference, everybody's dealing with some challenges. Everybody's got challenges, everybody's got problems, everybody's trying to sort things out. And it's good to know that because one, it's comforting that, hey, you're not the only one that's dealing with some difficulties in your business. But two, it's also an understanding that these things, these challenges that we have in business, they're not going away, right? No matter how much we grow, we're going to have new challenges, new things to tackle. So we better get used to it, we better get comfortable with it. And after all, that's what we do as entrepreneurs. We're problem solvers. We solve problems with our product. That's why people buy our product, to solve a problem. We solve problems for our customers through customer support. We solve problems for our team, we solve issues with our offerings. You get the point. This is what we do day in and day out. So get comfortable with that fact that it's just never going to end. This whole idea of the everything going perfect and smooth sailing and you're just sipping, you know, some chardonnay on your yacht. Those scenes are for retirement, right? Those are when you're not working on something significant. And that's what I learned. There were lots of great entrepreneurs, business people, business owners, software companies, companies growing at the speed of light. And they have challenges, they're going through difficulty. So that was the first thing I noticed that, hey, I'm not alone in this. Number two, when you go to a conference, and this was very, very apparent to me at this conference. Cause there were so many amazing people. There's no replacement for in person connections. When I was at this conference, I gotta be honest, you know, it was great to be a speaker, it's great to connect. But in the back of my head I felt, man, this is taking two days of my time. I'm super busy. I would think, oh, what do I do those two days? How I would be caught up. I'm gonna be, you know, kind of behind with email and all that kind of stuff when I get back to work in two days. But I soon realized this is a great investment. The relationships I made at this conference were priceless. And I'm not talking about, you know, people that are going to be partnering with us or potential customers maybe, but I'm talking about just relationships and business people that have become friends, people that I can reach out to, people that have introduced me to other people. There's just nothing like meeting people in person, making those personal connections, having a meal together, discussing that last session together. This is the beauty of conferences. And every time I go to a great one like this one, it reminds me there is no replacement for that type of investment that in person connection. Make those investments, go to those conferences. Because you just can't do that from your office. Number three. One of the big themes and one of the most repeated ideas that was said at the conference was that it's getting really saturated in our marketplace, in our world when it comes to marketing. It's very noisy, it's very hard to get people's attention. So where are we going in the world of business? How are we going to be able to differentiate and get new users, get new customers? And it really boils down to your product. Product is really what's going to save us or save you. And the best way to really have a viral product is to have a great product. Because a product that's exceptional, people will talk about, people will share it with others. It will snowball and you will not have to sell it, it will sell itself. This is not to say you shouldn't market, like, grow your email list or to run ads or to do any kind of content marketing. This is important to get awareness. But the point that many people were making at the conference was triple down on the quality of your product. Really work on crafting a great experience for your customers. Because if it's fantastic, people talk about it and you know what I'm talking about. You can remember when you had a great experience with something and you just felt compelled to tell other people. And it could be a, you know, a new phone, it could be a software, it could be a game, it could be an experience at a restaurant. I went to this restaurant in Sydney called Nomad and it was amazing. The food was just to die for. And every time I talk to anybody who visits Sydney, I tell them, you have to go to Nomad. Am I getting an affiliate commission? No. Am I a part owner and Nomad? No. But I feel compelled to, to tell my friends about a great experience, even though you're going to pay a pretty penny for it. But that's the power of a great product. And it just reminds you that you really need to constantly iterate and improve your product to wow your customers. Number four, play the long game. Many of the speeches, many of the side talks or side conversations talked about, how are you building for the long term? How are your decisions today going to affect your business 10 years from now? Your pricing decisions, your refund policy, how you market, how you brand, the content you write, this stuff matters. And when you build for the long term, you think about, hey, what does my business look like in 10 years from now? Am I doing the things today that will move me in that direction, that will supplement that, will support that vision? This is really important. You don't want to have to pay for mistakes of the past. And this is something I learned the hard way. So do everything you can to plan for the future, to plan for the long run. This is very counterintuitive for a lot of startups because startups, their whole thing is like just, you know, create fast and break things, make mistakes and put it out there, and that's good and all, but you also got to think about, you know, cleaning things up quickly, not being in that state for too long, because the longer you're in that not so perfect state, the longer it's going to be part of your legacy in the long run, part of your brand, part of what people think of you. And number five, remote work is going to be the future. It's going to Be part of every company in the future. This was a big topic at SAS Talk. I actually spoke on this topic. You know, building, hiring, motivating and managing a remote team. It's just going to be the standard in business now because people are starting to understand we live in a global market and we don't want to limit ourselves to only our local talent. There are a lot of advantages to remote teams, but there are also challenges. And this is what I talked about in my speech and important to be aware of them. Just like there are challenges in having all your employees in one office. But more and more, even bigger companies now are having parts of their employee workforce remote work from home, distributed. And it's just a way to compete with the global market. And the good thing is that you can be a part of that as you're growing your business. Let me tell you about Intuit QuickBooks. When I was starting out my business, I remember sitting at my desk late at night, not working on my business, but cleaning up numbers, tracking and reconciling payments and wondering how this became my life. But once I automated the admin side of things, of my finances, those nights had disappeared and I felt a whole lot better. Outdo it with Intuit QuickBooks. QuickBooks is the trusted end to end solution that businesses rely on for getting paid, managing finances, paying employees, finding new customers and more. 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To wrap up today's lesson, I wanted to give you my biggest takeaways from this conference. It was a great conference. I highly recommend you check out sasdoc if you can make it the Dublin event in October. They always have great speakers, great attendees. Everybody was so humble and kind and nice and open and transparent. And giving with their information, sharing their struggles, sharing how they run their business, what works, what doesn't. And being around those types of people is super helpful because it motivates you, it keeps you going, it keeps you moving forward every day. It gives you that kind of energy boost that can last for you, that can work for you for a few months. That wraps up today's lesson. But today's episode is not over. It's Free Ride Friday. Let's see who won this week's Free Ride. And the winner is Great Indiana Man. Great Indiana man is our winner. It's the handle on itunes. Great Indiana man says Incredibly Helpful Podcast. Five stars. One of my favorites. Always challenges me and helps me grow as a business owner. Thanks Great Indiana Man. Your mission is to email me at omar@100mba.net so I can hook you up with the Lifetime Access to Easy course. Congrats. If you want to win access to our $500 course over at EasyCourse Co and build your own online course, just leave us an itunes rating and a review and then listen in on Friday to see if you want. It's that simple. Our way to say thanks for showing us love on itunes. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. If you know you're going to a conference, I would clear your schedule for those days. Don't expect to get any work done because you just can't squeeze it in. It's super hard to take calls, do meetings when you're in the moment, when you're trying to network, when you try to build relationships, when you're going to the sessions and you're exhausted by the end of the day. So make sure you allow the time for you to get the most out of the conference. You're spending money, you're traveling, you're doing all that kind of stuff. You're making that investment. Get the most out of that investment. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in Monday's episode. I'll see you then. Take care. Of.

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