MBA957 How To Spend Less on Travel + Free Ride Friday!

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Hey O. Welcome to the $100 NBA show the Business Pod. Binge Worthy Business Lessons 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 the Hundred Dollar MBA, a complete business training and community online over at100mba.net and in today's episode you will learn how to spend less on travel. In today's episode, I'm mainly going to focus on travel for business, but you can definitely use these strategies when traveling for pleasure. Whether you're traveling to meet a big client, to speak at a conference, to attend a conference to meet suppliers in China, or even start a whole new business in a new country, there are ways to do it for less without sacrificing comfort. I love the travel, but I don't like to do it in the style where it sacrifices my comfort. I'm going to give you the best travel tips, hacks and strategies to make sure your travel for business is going to be cost effective but comfortable. Let's get into it. Let's get down to business. Alright, I want to frame up today's lesson so you understand what we're trying to do with Travel for Business for Less. Number one, when you're traveling for business you can obviously write off a lot of these expenses as a tax deduction. Before I travel for business anywhere, I contact my accountant and I tell him this is what I'm doing. And I give him as much detail as possible. For example, I say I'm traveling to this conference. It's in this city. This is how many days I'm staying there. This is how long the conference is. This is what I'm going to be doing there. And he gets back to me on email with a list of things that I can write off with everything I'm doing there, whether it's my flights, my accommodations, my Uber rides, or anything else I didn't think of. Now, even though I'm writing this off, it's still a business expense. I don't want to spend more money than I have to. A tax deduction is not a rebate. It just deducts how much money you're going to be taxed on. Having said that, I don't travel completely backpacker style, where it's just not comfortable for me. I'm a big guy. I'm six five, and comfort is important to me when I'm traveling. So today I want to mainly focus on how to travel for less for business when it comes to your flights, your accommodations, your transport, where you are, and maybe a few other things. Number one, let's start with flights. Now, there's plenty of travel hacking sites that tell you you can collect points with the right credit cards and you can earn, like, loyalty points at a certain airline if you're loyal to that airline and all these things are correct. But one thing I want to say is that if I'm going to pay for a flight and get a tax deduction, I want to do that and use my points for my personal type of travel. If I'm going on vacation, I would love to not spend any money on my flights and just use the points I've earned with the flights I bought for business. So that's the only point I really want to talk about when it comes to points. Don't use your points on business travel. Use them for personal travel. That way you're not putting money out of pocket for your personal travel. Can't get a tax deduction on your personal travel. Right. All right, what else when it comes to flights? Well, the number one way to get a great price on a flight is to book early. I can't tell you how many times I've gotten a great deal on a flight. Sometimes almost unbelievable because we booked three, four, five months in advance. I would say the sweet spot is five to three months in advance. You're going to get a really good rate. So if you can plan your travel schedule for business in advance, it's going to be a whole lot better for you. Now, when you book a business class flight in advance, that's where you see a lot of savings. But you still see savings with economy class when you book in advance. But you can literally save thousands of dollars by booking in advance for a business class ticket. Now, say, for example, you just don't have the budget to fly business class, which is completely fine. And some people honestly don't feel the value in business class. They don't feel like it's that much better. I don't agree with them necessarily. But that's okay. If you're on a budget or you don't really see the value in going business class. I highly recommend that you book exit seats. Now, nowadays, most airlines will charge you for an exit seat. It's called an extra legroom seat or something like a premium seat. And depending how long your flight is for, like a major international flight, you're talking about $120 to upgrade to the seat. So well worth it. You're gonna get a whole lot more legroom. It's gonna be a whole lot easier for you to sleep. They also throw in some other perks cause it's a premium seat, like boarding early. So a smart, cost effective alternative to business class is one of these exit seats. I would prefer an exit seat over an actual premium economy seat. You get a whole lot more legroom and it's just definitely worth it for me to pay the extra money. Now, I mentioned about being loyal to an airline. This definitely helps. If there's an airline that goes pretty much everywhere you need to go for business, then stick with them in the long haul, you might be able to move up in their actual reward system. And there's some perks by being a gold member or a platinum member. And you may get some free upgrades. So it definitely actually counts to be loyal to an airline. Now what about accommodations? Now if your accommodations are not covered by the conference you're going to or whoever's flying you out for business where you're paying out of pocket, you have a few options and just go back to flights for a second. You know, even if your client or the conference is paying for your flights, they may negotiate and give you an allowance. And then you can actually save some money that way, or you can maximize that allowance with the right combination of seat plus upgrade or whatever you want to do. All right, back to accommodations. If you're paying for your accommodations or you have an allowance for accommodations, you have a couple options. Number one, you can obviously book a hotel, but another great option is Airbnb. Now, I highly recommend Airbnb definitely for personal travel, but it's great for business travel as well. With Airbnb, you get a whole lot more space, especially if you're going to be working while you're away. Often, the Internet quality I found on Airbnbs are a lot better. You can ask the host for what their upload and download speed before you reserve. And with Airbnb, you get a kitchen, you get actual facilities where you can make yourself your own breakfast, where you can even cook yourself dinner if you wanted to. Sometimes when you're traveling, you just can't stomach another meal outside. That's, of course, if you're not doing business in Italy, right? But in most places, you just kind of get sick of eating out. So I love the Airbnb option, even for business. One note about Airbnb is that it's more cost effective if you have a longer stint of time because they charge you a service fee and a cleaning fee. If you're only going to fly in for a night or two, the hotel option is probably better. Now, hotels are not bad either as an option. And one of the advantages of hotels is that most hotels have some sort of fitness facility. So if you love to exercise, a lot of hotels actually accommodate that, while Airbnbs don't. You might get lucky with an Airbnb in a building that has some sort of fitness equipment, but it's super rare. Now, when it comes to hotels, I like to search for hotels via kayak. It gives me an array of different prices from different sites and the actual price from the hotel. And what I like to do is I always like to book directly with the hotel if there's any chance I could book directly with the company, whether it's the hotel or the airline for that matter, I always do it. It's just a safer bet. So what I do is I find the best price on Kayak, whether it's with a different company or with the hotel. And then I call up the hotel and say, hey, hey, I found this price on Expedia, for example. Can you match it for me? And nine times out of 10, they do. They say, yeah, sure, we can match that price. And they book the reservation for you right then and there. It's a lot harder for them. To screw up your reservation when you book directly with them. Now, some hotels offer free breakfast. That may be an option you want to look at to save a little bit of money, especially if you can't write off breakfast. Depending on where you live, what country you live in, and the tax laws, personal meals are not covered even in a business trip. So it's sort of like a nice little savings if they have breakfast for free. And some Airbnbs also include breakfast.

Oh, could this vintage store be any cuter? Right. And the best part, they accept Discover. Accept Discover in a little place like this? I don't think so.

Jennifer.

Oh, yeah, huh? Discover is accepted where I like to shop. Come on, baby, get with the times.

Right?

So we shouldn't get the parachute pants. These are making a comeback, I think.

Discover is accepted at 99 of places.

That take credit cards nationwide, Based on.

The February 2025 Nielsen report.

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So you've touched down. You're in the city where you're traveling to. How do you get around now in most major cities, London, New York, San Francisco, Sydney, things like that. Uber is actually a cost effective option. You're not going to need to drive around a lot, especially if you're going for business. If you're going for a conference, you're pretty much going to just go to the conference and come back to your place every day. And if a conference is in a hotel and you're booked in that hotel, you know your moving about is going to be very minimal. The only exception is there are some cities where renting a car is really inexpensive, and some of these cities are very popular for conferences. Cities like Orlando, Florida. Just on a quick search, there are some car rental companies that are renting cars for $23 a day that could be cheaper than one single Uber ride. Now, obviously you have to factor in insurance as well as the gas you're going to be using during your stay and the length of your stay and if you want to do something else while you're out there. So you got to take a look at how much you're going to be actually moving about. And what's great about Uber is if you go on their website, they'll give you an estimate of how much they would charge from one point to another. Personally, I like the Uber option if you're in a major city, like a New York, like a London, like a Bangkok, and it's actually nicer to do walking around the city and be on foot. To me, if I'm out there for business, I don't want to have to have the stress of, you know, worrying about the car if I get in an accident, if I'm in a foreign country, if something's going to happen, or I'm totally okay with this if I'm on vacation, if I'm on a holiday, because I want to take my time, I want to have fun, I want to explore. But if I'm traveling for business, I'm going to be in and out in a few days. I just can't be bothered. And even if the Uber turns out to be more expensive than renting a car, I'll sometimes just opt for that for the peace of mind. Now, it's worth noting that in some cities and some countries, Uber is not the cheapest option. Like, for example, in Italy, taxis are cheaper than Uber. So you may want to jump on TripAdvisor and do a quick search to find out if one of the countries you're going to is like that. Always get a receipt if you're in a taxi. Of course, neat thing about Uber is that they email you a receipt so you have that on file. You can just forward that to your accountant. One final tip when it comes to traveling for business and how to save some money is to group up your business trips together. So say, for example, you have a business trip coming up in San Francisco. If you have anything else you can do in California, even in the US or during or around those dates, you're going to save a whole lot of money than flying out a whole nother time. And planning your travel schedule is so important. It's going to help you save you a lot of money as well save you a lot of headaches. So if you haven't done that for 2018 yet, do it now. Plan everything as much as possible. Earmark dates just in case the maybes, the I hope so's, and see how many trips you can bridge together. There you have it. Happy travels. I love to travel, even for business. It's a lot of fun and I hope the tips today helped you save some money along the way to keep your Travel budget for your business. Tight. All right, today's episode is not over yet because it's free ride Friday. We got to see who won this week's free ride to ezcourse, our 30 day course on how to build an online course over at EasyCourse. Co every Friday we give away a lifetime membership to somebody who's left us an itunes rating and review. Leave us a rating and review and you enter our weekly random draw. Let's see who won this week's free ride. And the winner is. Julio Muniz. Julio says it's like taking vitamins. Five stars. This show is awesome. It's filled with useful information. Omar delivers his information in a great fashion. He knows his stuff, he does his homework so we can enjoy a compelling show. Thank you, Julio, for that amazing review. And yes, I work really hard to do the research to do the homework to make sure that we keep it concise and that you leave every episode feeling better, knowing more. So that way you can keep coming back to our show. So thank you so much for the awesome review and congratulations. You won the free ride to ezcourse. Just email us over at omar100nba.net so we can hook you up with that free ride. If you want to win a free ride, it takes two seconds to leave as an itunes rating and review and you enter our weekly random draw. Listen in on Fridays to see if you won't. Alright, that's it for me today, guys. But before I go, I want to leave you with this. One of the best things you can do when you're planning for travel, for business is to have some sort of spreadsheet with a procedure so that way you don't have to reinvent the wheel every single time. You know exactly what you have to do. Step one, check flight. Step two, check the difference between Airbnb and hotels. An order of operation. And this could be your guide and it'll make things a whole lot easier the next time around. And what's great about it is that then you can hand it over to somebody else to do it for you. Whether it's a virtual assistant or an executive assistant, somebody works for you full time. All right, that's it for me today, guys. I'll check you in Monday's episode where we have a must read episode. I share with you a book that has greatly influenced me as an entrepreneur. I share with you how to stop worrying and start living by Dale Carnegie. Tune in for that on Monday. Hit subscribe so you don't miss it. And I'll check you then take care. Of.

Is it time to reimagine your future? The right business skills may make a difference in your career. At Capella University, we offer a relevant education that's designed to focus on what you need to know in the business world. We'll teach professional skills to help you pursue your goals like business management, strategic planning, and effective communication, and you can apply these skills right away. A different future is closer than you think with Capella University. Learn more at Capella. Eduardo.