The Monday Morning Marketing Podcast is brought to you byEsther of IPA Group, bringing premier online promotion to your business.
And Melanie of STOMP Social Media Training, who empowers business owners to manage social social media and marketing for themselves.
And we're back with another episode of the Monday MorningMarketing Podcast. Today we're talking about if you got a million pounds, euros, dollars, insert your currency here, what would you do differently in your business?
So just imagine it, you woke up this morning and it's the start of a brand new week and somebody said, here, take a million of insert your currency here and you decide exactly where you're going to spend that money on your business. Okay, just forget about private debt, but just our business.
Forget about your holidays.
Which is tough this time of year. So me personally, I think one of the first things I would do is I would upgrade a lot of my equipment.
Hardware, software, all of that.
And maybe go for the higher paid for plans of stuff.
Or maybe buy out all the lifetime deals. Then you wouldn't have to pay them ever again.
So where would you spend your mil?
I would start with hiring more staff.
You haven't got enough already?
No, never enough. I'm very fussy like that. You always need more staff, you always look to be growing because at the end of the day, you need to invest the money into your team, into your staff, into investing in your business. So hiring more people, training them up, retraining, or expanding the training of all the people who already work with us and just investing in them. That's where I would start. But that will only take about a couple of $1,000. Got the rest of it to go. But yeah, I'm like you, I would definitely upgrade my equipment. A new podcast mic for example, or ten, likeCharlotte, but I think too, I would invest a lot of it in marketing ads, GoogleAds, Facebook ads, even old school marketing, going to events, flying out to training events and stuff at Social Media Marketing World.
Where I'm going anyway.
Yeah, you're going anyway, but I mean, I'm not yet or going to any expos and stuff in foreign countries. So therefore you could get your holiday and still be doing business stuff.
There is that. I think what else I would do is I would set aside some money to treat my customers to some sort of extra special gifts. Ido kind of give them stuff seasonally, especially my higher end, there's more expectation of it, but I make sure that there is more anticipatory money set aside for upselling or cross selling using gifts. And I know not every body would have the budget to do that, so I totally appreciate that. But if you've been given a million, you've got some play money as well.
Yeah, exactly. And it's another way to invest in your future because like you say, if you're giving them gifts, then they'll remember you the next time they're going to look for something in your field. So I think gifts are 100% viable and valuable to be giving out, even, say, Christmas time, anniversaries of you working together, not their wedding anniversary, that would be weird, but small details even a "just because" gift from time to time, because I think a lot of times gifts at Christmas can get lost in the whole mountain of, well, I got that, and I got that.
And bonus for the staff you have as well. I mean, I've got a couple of VAS logging their guts out, certainly this year. It's been a very busy year in 2022 for STOMP, so I'd definitely look out for those guys, give them bonuses. I already do, but they'd get better ones and just make the most of the relationship by sort of pacing ourselves a little bit better because we've got the money and the input for it.
Yeah, and I think in terms of the podcast here, the MondayMorning Marketing podcast, we would invest in some merchandise.
Oh, yes.
T-shirts, hoodies, movies, mugs, pens.
Monday Morning Marketing mugs.
We are the mugs
Tea or coffee.
They don't want to have us on their mugs. We'd love to know your feedback, guys, and what you would like to see, but could you even consider spending a million? Would you buy the office where you are or buy a different office space?
Oh, I definitely get out of this space, but only because I could have absolutely everything to hand. At the moment, my printer is down in another part of the area just because of the way the building is networked. So, yeah, I probably would get a better office space or heck, even build a proper office space in the back garden.
Yes, we've done that before. Very useful. And you don't even need a million to do that. No, we did ours for a couple of hundred. It was basic,
But in fairness you had an outbuilding already
No, we put that in. Oh, yeah, we put all that in. But yeah,I don't even think you could spend a million unless you were doing products.You know, if we were to bring out a product like T shirts and mugs and stuff, then you'd be investing in first a lot of outlay for the printing of those and the packaging and those storage as well. But as online service providers, STOMP and IPA Group. Apart from hardware and software, there's not a lot that we spend our money on, thankfully.
No. Yeah, we always seem to run through it really quickly.Isn't that weird?
Yeah, but no, definitely, I think you've invested in a lot of events.
Oh, yeah, no, I've been unleashed.
She's been set free.
I went out to an event earlier this year called Kick start with a group of friends and we all set it up together and it was a really good event. But it really gave me the bug again and I thought, that's it. So I came back and went through my entire marketing budget for the next two months, paying for flights and booking hotels and obviously buying tickets as well. But just imagine if you had that sort of money set aside. You could book some thing every single month, you know?
Yeah. Something big every single month.
Or set up your own event with a million. You could set up your own event - have people come to you instead.
Oh, absolutely. And you could pay your speakers without any problem. It's just one of those things like, oh, well, another thing that businesses might have been struggling with over the past couple of years is paying their taxes. So some of it would have to go to the tax man, not because it's taxable money, but because you really need to pay the tax man. He is evil.
Trust you to be the sensible one out of the two of us.
I know, right? Maybe put some aside in the pension.
Yeah.
I know we're self employed and we're young, so we don't think about these things, but I don't know.
I can't believe you just called me young.
You are young in the prime of your life.
Now I sound old.
But there's so much that we probably hold back on in business, because we don't have the liquidity, we don't have the cash just sitting there.
It's the cash flow for a lot of businesses, small or large, we're all held back by our cash flow. 30 days, some businesses have 60 or even90 days to pay, which is a real nightmare.
Yeah. But I would strongly, strongly advise you all to invest if you were to win the lottery or you were to win a windfall or dear forbid, you inherit it. Invest. Invest in your training, invest in your business, because at the end of the day, that's what's going to give you the income that you need for years to come. Don't go spending it all on a brand new house and anew car and holidays and giving money to everybody left, right and centre, because it will run out really fast.
Amen to that. So, once again, guys, we would love to hear back from you how you would spend your million. It doesn't matter where you are in the world, we'd love to hear your feedback. And, yeah, this has been an interesting topic to cover.
Bye now.
Bye.