#43 Getting Over the Materialistic Goods

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[0:00:14.0] Hey, everybody. Stephen Esketzis here from Marketing on the Move.

And I’m coming to you, back-to-back podcasts. I’m driving home from soccer which is where I recorded the last one from. So hopefully, these come out in order.

But yeah, so what I want to talk about, on the way home, I was having to think about this, just drove past the place where I play indoor soccer. It’s located right near a whole lot of industrial warehouses and shops and things like that.

So it’s kind of like a warehouse turned into an indoor soccer field. It’s pretty neat. Anyway, so I was driving past all these warehouses, and it got me thinking that when I moved into my office, which I’m currently working from right now, I used to envy everybody that had an office, had a place of work, had a warehouse, had anything, any of these sort of materialistic goods that I looked up and I thought, “Damn, these guys have an office. They’ve got their own room.

They’ve got their name on the door. They’ve got all these cool stuff.” And then what I realized is that as you move up this ladder of acquiring this materialistic things, you look back and you think, “Gee, these guys are—“ You don’t look at it as a materialistic thing that you want to have.

You look back at it as an expense, as a liability to your business. So it’s funny, because as I was driving back now, I looked at all these offices and I’m thinking, “Gee, all these. Imagine how much the rent and the lease would cost, just to fit out one of these, little loan, furnish it with all your products or your office equipment, any of that.”

And it’s just an interesting way of thinking. It’s something that I think a lot of people don’t realize. They’ll look at a car. So say you want a nice car. Say you want an Audi R8, I was looking at this the other day with a friend.

And say you want a nice car, a nice car here in Australia, I don’t’ know the exact price. I’m pretty sure it was around AUD250,000. It was something like that. Let’s say AUD250,000.

Right now, you’ve got to earn almost AUD500,000 of gross income to be able to pay for that car. AUD500,000. When you take tax into consideration, that’s another thing.

Whenever you look at a materialistic good or any purchase of that matter, you need to double it. Because with income tax or with company tax or whatever takes your paying, at the end of the day, you need to make double exactly what the actual cost of the purchase is.

So I always look at things with double. So when you look at a car or an office or a place you want to rent, all of these things, you’re looking at pretty much double what they’re paying in the expenses.

So these warehouses around here probably cost about $40,000 to $60,000 a year per annum in cost, just to lease it out for a year. And then you’ve got to make almost $100,000 to $120,000 in clear profits, and just to pay for this, in clear revenue just to cover that cost, so not profits, but revenue.

You’ve got to make $120,000 in revenue and sales just to cover these costs. If you want a nice car and you’re looking at a super car, even $100,000 car, it costs you $200,000 in revenue just to have that car. Now, I’m not saying these things are bad, but I’m just saying that as you grow and as you become more mature in your business and everything starts to increase, you start looking at these things not as materialistic goods and items, but you start looking at these things as the expenses/liabilities. And you may already be thinking that now, but it’s just something that I was reminded of.

But before I moved into my office, that I thought, “Gee, having an office like this would be sick. It would be amazing. Having an office like this, it would just make me feel like I’m on a whole new level.” And now, I’m looking back at all these warehouses and places of work, and I’m thinking, “Gee, these guys, they’re just paying money.”

I mean, obviously, you need some of these, but I thought it was super cool just to have a space.

[0:03:57.2]So when you’re looking at other people working. If they’ve got a big office in the city looking over a tower or whatever, just think to yourself that these guys are renting it out. It’s an expense.

It might be a nice thing to have but just kind of manage in your mind to look at it in your expenses versus your assets, versus your liabilities, versus your income. So that’s what you need to be looking at, and just think about where it fits that on the spreadsheet, on your profit and loss statement.

Where does it fit in your financials?

And I think that’s just an interesting way of looking at it. And I think as most people grow and they start running a business more seriously, that’s not taking into consideration the costs of everything, they think the business is cool to run because you’ve got an office or you’re an entrepreneur, but at the end of the day, all these are costs and they’re all adding up.

So they’ve got to be managed somewhere. It’s just an interesting thing I noticed because what ticked me off actually was one specific company online. And I found he kept posting photos of his car and of the warehouse.

He probably still does. And they’re an apparel company. So they sell clothes. And he kept posting all these photos.

And I was like, “Man, this would be awesome to have it.” So just think about it when you’re starting your business. Think about all these things are nice to have.

But at the end of the day, they’re expenses. And when you’re running a serious business, your goal is to dramatically increase your income and your sales, and your revenue, and reduce your expenses and your liabilities as much as possible because you want to make that big chunk of profit. That’s one. And another thing is people just focus on topline revenue, focus on the profit that comes in between.

I know two specific companies in the Internet marketing industry that are going head-to-head. I know that one of them is a lot more profitable than the other. And they’re both doing pretty similar sort of work. So I’m not going to name them.

But yeah, it’s really interesting because you just see behind the closed doors what one company values over the other, where their focus is, and where they put their resources. And you see how a company is actually ran.

I’m not going to say the right way, but you see the two strategic ways, and the strategic decisions made from the CEO and the founders, and how they decide to allocate their revenue, how they decide to allocate their resources most effectively. And it’ll be interesting to see in one or three years’ time if those companies are still where they’re at now or if they’re going to be growing or if what they’re focused on has been the right thing or the wrong thing.

So keep it in mind, guys. I’m heading back now. I’m sure we actually have the five minutes. So I want to keep talking.

[0:06:31.1]So back into what I was saying from the last podcast, I’m putting together a few different things. I’m putting together the free tab in my website which is awesome. So that’s coming together really well.

Another thing is I’m building my autoresponder up. So I’m sure as you guys know, your market is out there, you’re business owners, whatever you’re passionate about the most, it’s always your own work which seems to like the most.

So if you’re a graphics designer, it’s always your own website which seems to be the ugliest. So if I’m a funnel architect, then my funnel is usually the one that is having that people shouldn’t model of, because I never get around to finishing it and doing it as well as I’d like to.

But I’ve decided to spend some time into it. Now that I’m back from the States, I’ve got that time to really get into a routine. So my autoresponder is going to be amazing.

I cannot wait to put that together. There’s a few steps involved in getting it to the level that I wanted to be, so I can sort of leave it on autopilot for a while. But that’s on the top of my lists of to-do’s as well.

[0:07:31.1] And then the other thing which I really want to focus on is creating a routine in my life, so making sure that whatever I spend my time on each day is in a routine.

Am I writing in the morning?

Am I spending my time on projects, and my achievements, and my goals?

Am I working towards what I want to be working for?

Or am I just working to be working?

And I’m not talking about working on the business or in the business, those things are important too. You need to make sure you’re working and architecting from a standpoint of the founder or business owner.

But I’m specifically talking about being in a routine and making sure every morning, you get up and you know exactly what you need to do. You wake up with the same routine to be productive and as efficient as possible, because you’ve only got so much time to work on these things.

So you need to make sure that when you spend the time, you’re using this effectively as possibly. So you’ve got to think about it.

I mean, I know when people put out a lot of content when they do their content marketing, there’s no intermediate ROI on what they do. But they’re building and they’re doing it.

So if you look at it over a one-year point, if you post every single day on a blog and you look back on it. What’s the return of investment on one year of posting? And I think that’s a really good way to look at it.

You look at your return on investment on specific tasks which you can do. And for me, I know I want to make my time as valuable as possible.

So really, nailing down these few projects which you’ve got, whether that’s blogging, whether that’s building a funnel, whether that’s following up with an autoresponder, speaking to people, networking, all these things are given away. A lot of people are asking for coffee.

A lot of people are asking me out for dinner. Your personal life gets in the way, as well as your business, so balancing those can be hard.

So I think it’s vitally important to make sure that you’ve got a routine. And it’s funny because now that I’ve come back from the States, things have gotten a lot busier.

And I know that I can’t manage it all, but it’s making sure that you’re smart enough and you’re strong enough to making sure that you’ve organized yourself properly, so that if you do go out for coffee, if you do meet someone, if you do spend some time with your girlfriend, or if you go out for a movie or whatever it is, these things are taken care of. And you’re not wondering why something is not working, or when someone’s struggling more than someone else.

It’s something which I think is really important. So making sure that you’ve got routine, got that plan of action, got that schedule.

You don’t have to stick to it 100% of the time, but you want to make sure you’re as accurate as possible. So if you head over CharlesNgo.com, I believe. Go to his blog.

One of the most recent interviews he did was I think the guy’s company’s name was Asian Efficiency. Have a look at it. He did about a one-hour interview on productivity hacking.

And I’m in the middle, I want to reach out to him, see if I can get him on for a podcast for Marketing on the Move as well. But have a watch of that video. It’s fantastic.

And he talks about really making the most of the 24 hours you’ve got with you. So those 24 hours are sacred.

You want to make sure that every 24 hours you’ve got, whether it would be sleeping, whether it would be implementing, whether it would be working, whether it would be selling, whether it would be whatever you’re doing, making sure those are the most effective 24 hours. And you’re putting yourself to work.

So that’s one piece of advice I can give you guys. Focus on your routine. Focus on your day-to-day tasks.

Make sure that you’re moving forward and working on the business, not in the business. So that’s a bit of it there. I’ve got another episode which I really want to record as well.

So I’m looking forward to putting that together. I might do that tomorrow morning on the way to work, on the way to the office. But yeah, hopefully, in between all this.

You guys see some of the interviews we had just before this recording we had. Esther, doing PR, she was fantastic. We’ve got Russ Ruffino as well.

He was incredible, talking about high-level. He just cracked $200,000 a month, I believe. You would have heard on the podcast episode.

And looking to take it to a million dollar a month. So we’ve got a lot of content, guys. Hopefully, you’re enjoying the Marketing on the Move podcast.

Join my autoresponder, shoot me a reply back to the first e-mail. Tell me if you’re enjoying things. Let me know how you’re going. Comment in the comments below. If there’s anything I can help you with.

Let me know, guys. I’m here to help you to serve. And we’ve got some awesome, awesome interviews planned.

I can’t wait to get on them. And you’ll be seeing those released very shortly. So if you got anything else, guys, shoot me a comment below.

Shoot me an e-mail, and I’ll speak to you soon.