Level 1 of Business Spending
In this concise advisory video, Ryan Deiss walks through a series of head‑to‑head spending choices for a business generating roughly $500,000 in annual revenue. For each pair of potential investments—CRM vs. marketing agency, website redesign vs. CRM, sales manager vs. paid ads, COO vs. paid ads, and many more—he consistently selects options that provide immediate data, lead generation, and market insight. The core recommendations are: (1) prioritize a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system to capture and leverage data; (2) allocate budget to paid advertising to build awareness and drive leads; and (3) invest heavily in attending industry conferences, which he argues deliver the fastest ROI by enabling direct customer conversations, competitor scouting, and networking. He advises against premature spending on roles or assets such as a COO, office space, branding packages, or in‑house marketing teams, deeming them lower‑priority at this revenue level.
