MBA2373 The 3 Things You Must Spend on to Grow Your Business + Free Ride Friday

0:09Heyo! Welcome to the$100 MBA show, the business podcast that always got your back with our practical business lessons. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher, Omar Zinhome. I'm also the co-founder of Webinar Ninja, an independent software company I started back in 2014. And today is Free Ride Friday. On Free Ride Fridays, we give away a lifetime membership to the$100 MBA program, our six-part course on how to become a better entrepreneur, 100 % guaranteed. Just leave us an Apple podcast rating and review, and you enter our weekly random draw we call Free Ride Friday. Listen in on Friday to see if you won.

0:42It's that easy. We announce this week's winner a little bit later in the episode. In today's episode, you will learn the three things you must spend on to grow your business. There's a lot of things you can spend your money on to keep your business going. But if you want to grow your business, these three things are essential. I've run many different kinds of businesses, physical product businesses, e-commerce, a software company, courses, training, you name it. And it didn't really matter what I sold. I needed to spend money on these three areas to make sure my business kept on growing. So I want to share those three things with you today and give you some insights on how to get started, how to implement and make sure your business is always on the uptick.

1:23Let's get into it. Let's get down to business. So what is the first thing I recommend you spend on to grow your business? With whatever profits you're making in your business, what do you want to invest in or reinvest in? And the first thing is skills and knowledge, meaning you should be investing in yourself and your team and getting better all the time. It's the best investment you can make because if you're better, you're going to make better decisions. You're going to hire better people. You're going to create a better product. You're going to do better in general. And the same goes for the people on your team.

1:58When you invest in your team members, you're upgrading them constantly. You're becoming more competitive in the marketplace. You're able to produce better work. This is why I always say if you're looking to improve yourself or your team, whether it's courses or trainings or going to conferences or meetups or masterminds or learning from other people so that you can just level up, this is an investment that will always give you an ROI. The best thing about it is that it's an investment that you can take on and keep forever. It doesn't matter which business you're running, doesn't matter if you later on change careers, even those skills, the knowledge that you gain stays with you and becomes an unbelievable asset.

2:41I can almost draw a direct line, a direct correlation between when I invested in myself and when my business started growing. And listen, you have to start with investing thousands and thousands of dollars. You can start with a few dollars like a book or an online course, whether it's for you or your team members. Let me give you a very straight example. Let's say you have a marketing manager that helps you manage your social media and you want to get into paid ads. Enrolling your team member into learning how to run Facebook ads or Instagram ads, whether it's an online course or some sort of training or coaching, is going to get them to produce better results.

3:19They're going to know how to do this for your business. They're going to run better ads, get you more customers, and grow your business in general. Most of your team members are probably looking to improve anyway. They want to improve. They want to feel like they're working at a place that helps them grow and makes them a better professional. I know when I was working as a teacher, I loved the places where I felt like I was growing. So give that to your team members and they're going to love you and love working for you. Additionally, a lot of your team members probably have a lot of idle time on their hands, a few hours a week that they can utilize by learning something new.

3:54So instead of trying to hire an ad specialist in this example, cultivate one already in your company. Somebody that has some extra time that can learn the skill, train them up, and get them going. So the first thing is invest in yourself and your team when it comes to skills and knowledge. Number two, invest in your product. The better your product is, the better it addresses the problems for your customers, the easier it is for you to sell more of it and grow your company. You see, the best products are the ones that sell themselves. They're so good that people are compelled to tell other people about them.

4:28And that doesn't happen overnight. That has to happen through iteration and improvement of the product. By getting feedback from customers, learning how you can improve it, learning what they don't like about it or what they would rather have, or maybe some of the problems they still have even after using your product, this will allow you to go back to the lab and iterate on your product or service, whatever it might be. For example, you might have an online course that is doing pretty good, but you want to get feedback from your customers to find out how you can improve it so that you can sell more of this product.

4:58Learn that customers want a little bit more interaction. So you incorporate an office hours, an open live Q &A call every week. This allows your customers of the course to ask questions, understand how the material and how what they've learned applies to their situation and allows them to ask questions and ask how they can use what they've just learned in their particular situation, their particular circumstance. This adds value to your product. It makes it a lot easier to sell and allows you to then say, hey, this is a more valuable product. You can charge more for it. This then grows your business because you're making more money, more revenue, not only in more sales, but more revenue per sale.

5:39And this is just a small example. Every product or service can be improved, but you have to have the intention to constantly invest in it. Not only invest in the product itself, but how it's delivered, how it's consumed, how they get started, how they even buy this product on your website or in your storefront. That's all part of the buying experience. And if you improve all these different areas, every time you get a new customer, you're giving them more of a reason to tell other people about it. All right, we covered the first two things you should invest in your business to grow. One is you and your team's skills and knowledge.

6:14The second, invest in your product. And the third, it's going to sound obvious, but there's so many people that do not do this consistently. And that's invest in marketing. If people don't know you exist, it's incredibly hard for you to grow. It's incredibly hard for you to even sustain your business. I'm a big believer that marketing is so important that you should always be spending on marketing. It should be a line item in your P &L. You should have a steady stream of traffic. People learning about your business, learning about your products and services, signing up for your newsletter, signing up for more information, your freemiums, your opt-ins, your lead magnets, whatever it might be, and eventually buying through your nurturing sequence.

6:53But it all starts with awareness. People have to be aware you exist. You can have the greatest product in the world, but if you don't have a way to consistently, consistently get people to your website, to your store, and learn more about you, your product is going to fall on deaf ears. People are just not going to know it exists. So whether you invest in marketing, and you can invest in marketing in different ways, content marketing, whether you have a YouTube channel, a podcast, a blog, email marketing, social media marketing, paid ads, billboard marketing, sponsoring other people's content so that you can get in front of eyeballs, speaking on stages, sponsoring events.

7:31There's so many ways to market, but you have to market. You have to continually pump money into marketing. Now, here is something I've learned. When you are trying to market your business, you should try a couple of different ways to market. Once you find an avenue that gets you customers, that actually gets you high qualified customers, double, triple, quadruple down on it. Keep doing it until you don't see results. Too many people, they will market in one area, they'll get results and then get distracted and say, hey, I should be doing this and this and this and all these other ways to market.

8:04and they spread themselves too thin and they forget they have a way to market that actually works. Don't put your foot off the gas. Keep it planted to the floor. Listen, all my businesses have been self-funded. And when I start out a new business and there's limited budget, I still invest in marketing with my time and energy. Whether it's writing blog posts or guesting on other podcasts or creating content like videos and reels and podcast episodes. The point here is that I'm doing something to get awareness for my business, for my products, for my services constantly. I don't stop day in and day out.

8:42The idea of out of sight, out of mind is so true in business. You've got to be in sight constantly. There's one thing in common when it comes to most successful businesses and brands around the world, whether it's McDonald's or Apple or Coca-Cola or Starbucks, it doesn't matter. They're constantly marketing. You see ads everywhere. You see the golden arches everywhere. They're sponsoring football matches. They're doing all kinds of stuff to make sure you don't forget, hey, we exist. So the next time you get thirsty, think of buying us. Next time you get hungry, why not us? And of course, we don't have budgets like that, but we still have to adopt the same philosophy in our own world.

9:22So three things, invest in skills and knowledge. Two, invest in your product. Three, invest in marketing. If you invest in all three areas and see it as a must, you have to always do these three things. You're giving yourself the best chance for success. You're making things much easier on you and your business to be able to become that growing, thriving business you want. If you neglect any of these three, you're asking for trouble. And that's just the truth. I have experienced this and learned this the hard way so that you don't have to. So go ahead and start thinking about what am I going to do today to invest in these three areas in my business?

10:01Even if there's something small like picking up a book or emailing a survey to your customers to improve your product or shooting a new video and sending it out to your followers on social media, talking about your latest launch or news product or why you started your business in the first place. There you have it, guys. Thank you so much for listening. Today's episode is not over, though. It's Free Ride Friday. Let's see who won this week's free ride. And the winner is Brooke Norris. And Brooke says, great for any business level. Five stars. No matter where you're at in your business ventures, this podcast has something for you.

10:32Great listen. Thanks, Brooke, for that amazing review. Your mission is to email me over at omar at 100mba.net so we can hook you up with a lifetime membership to the$100 MBA program over at 100mba.net. If you want to win a free ride just like Brooke did, go ahead and leave us an Apple podcast rating and review and you enter our weekly random draw we call Free Ride Friday. Listen in on Friday just like today to see if you want. It's that easy. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. Many times I realize business is simple, but it doesn't mean it's easy. It's hard to stick to things consistently and remind yourself, I got to stick to this.

11:10I got to continue to do this. I can't let my foot off the gas. It's kind of mundane. It's kind of boring sometimes because you have to do things over and over and over and over because the consistency matters. It builds upon each other. and allows your business to have momentum and to grow consistently. Just remember, it can be simple, but it doesn't mean it's easy. It takes discipline. It takes focus. But guess what? Success is pretty sweet. It's going to be worth it. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll check you in Monday's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.

11:57Thank you.