SNM096: Choosing the Right Gear for your Business

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choosing the right gear for your business on today's episode. Today's episode is brought to you by Social Pilot. The social media and marketing tool for bloggers and small businesses joined over 20,000 social media pros at serve. No master dot com Backslash social pilot today Are you tired of dealing with your boss? Do you feel underpaid and underappreciated? If you want to make it online, fire your boss and start living your retirement dreams now then you've come to the right place. Welcome to serve no master podcast where you learn how to open new revenue streams and make money while you sleep. Presented live from a tropical island in the South Pacific by best selling author Jonathan Green. Now here's your host. I was just looking at some really cool gear over the last few days. See traveling in Thailand right now and one of the things that I've noticed cameras are very cheap here, compared to where I live. I live in my tiny tiny island in middle of nowhere. It's hard to get here. I'm in the big city. I'm near one of the biggest shopping malls in the world, and there's 10 massive shopping malls, always shopping districts and everything you could ever want from total knockoffs. High quality knock offs. You can't tell the difference to the premium of the premium. Anything you want to get your hands on. And I'm always thinking, Do I need to up my gear Now? There's a good question, isn't it? Is my gear good enough? Do I have the right stuff? And one of things I was looking at thinking about is the way record video I right now have, like seven right video cameras. I have a whole range. I could record stuff on my iPhone, which looks great. Most of the videos you've been saying about my iPhone I can record using a DSLR. I bought this really cool canon Rebel kiss. It's called, which is the international name of the camera called Like a T. I five or six or something. It's a good camera. It's a well known and well respected camera from the rebel Siri's that I bought from someone who was selling off all their old stuff on the island. I got a great deal on it. I bought it for about 20% or 30% of what's worse. It was a really great deal. And I have a couple of my coat Xia to have all of this. These old cameras, but none of them. It can record in four K. None of them can record even into K now. Nowhere that I have blowed videos even allows for K distribution. Most of the videos you see for me you're either on YouTube video. They don't let you do for K yet. It's such a large band with hog. The only reason you use four K is if you're doing DVDs. If I was going to send you a DVD, the or a blue Ray, you're gonna watch on the big screen, that's more than 50 inches. But still, I was looking at these cameras and look at all these different prices and the real challenge. Okay, you can get a logging they call it V logging or video logging for blogging with videos, and I was looking at all the different cameras and thinking about how do you decide what to buy? So this website that's well known for giving advice to video bloggers had a whole spectrum cameras from $200 all the way up to $3000. And it's like, Why do you need a do? I need a $3000 camera? You start to wonder, Do I need the most expensive stuff? And it could be tough. You end up thinking that you can't build a real business out spending a lot of money. So I want to kind of give you my philosophy for building a business. And how about finances? You? We talked a lot about finding This is some of the early episodes of certain master podcasts. I want to circle back to that. You can spend $3000 on a camera when I want you to do before you spend that money. Say, how am I gonna make my money back from this camera? For example, Maybe you're gonna run ads on YouTube. You can allow them to run ads on your news channel on YouTube will pay you a percentage of the profit. Mary ad. You have to have several 1,000,000 views of your videos before you pay back that camera. If you spend $200 for a camera the second you make dollar to a one year profitable. But if you spend $3000 you could make 10 times more money and you've still lost $1000. My philosophy across everything for buying software into technology is to spend from profits. And when you're thinking about buying something, don't just think this is cool or I really wanted your question is, will this make me more money? Will this improve my products? There are a couple of tools that I'm in the middle of acquiring right now. One of them is called the DJ I Osmo Mobile. Now I'm not gonna buy in Thailand cause it's actually cheaper. Some other places I could get it, but I did look it in some stores here, and I can save six years, $70 but buying it somewhere else and get it for $300 instead of 3 70 What this does is you. It holds your iPhone and let you record, and it makes amazing videos because it's like a steady cam. So it's like a steady camper iPhone, and it will mean when I record videos when I'm walking on the beach for you in the future. Starting next month, hopefully the veal's will be less shaky. I know that the video recorder a little bit shaky, and I'm trying to get better and better about that, and this is a way to do that. So this is a tool for very specific purpose. It will improve the experience of my videos and make them less shaky, so it gives a better experience. The audience. It's a very conscious person. I've been thinking about this for about three months, about three months. I mean, think about for more than a month, but I won't bite for another month. So maybe 2 to 3 months of deciding before I spend the money. It's very cautious purchase. Thinking about what? Why you want to buy something, how it's gonna prove things and think of a specific use. The other item. I'm in the middle of acquiring, and I'm gonna get it later. Today, my friend is bringing it to me for America is a teleprompter. Teleprompters air so expensive and really, really hard to choir in Asia anywhere in Asia might mean all of my friends. This is one thing none of my friends can find. One of my friends had one custom built by someone that was very I'm gonna say dangerous and scary looking. If you try to buy one, they cost 1000 of $1500 there people that rent, um, for $120 a day. But you're lucky if you're in America, you can grab one off Amazon and iPad one for about $160. But this one, what's great about it is it screws onto the front of your camera like your SLR style camera. It attaches to the lens cap, and it works using your phone so my phone will become a teleprompter. This will allow me to record videos. I won't be able to move around as much, but it will really improve the efficiency of my videos. One of the videos I recorded for one of my publishers it took me six hours and it wasn't very good. I had to keep doing different takes because he sent me a really long script. This will allow me to do faster, better videos where I can write out what I'm gonna say and do just like a president do a teleprompter style video. I won't do this very often. I'm not gonna do this for every video. A lot of I like to move around so the two tools are wonderful when I'm moving one from holding. Still, when I'm doing a pure video sales letter, it would be much better for me to do one. Using a teleprompter will make a big difference in my business, and that that was costs around $100. So I'll tell you, real numbers. Why not? When you're buying gear, wait until you get to a moment. You know? Hey, I'm doing this already. I'm already making money for my videos. And you too. But people have been complaining about the quality. They wanna watch stuff in 10. 80 then it makes sense. But if it's something that you just want and this is something I'm the king up Sometimes I just want the best like, Ah, I don't want the best. I don't want to start with something okay and work my way up, and that feeling that desire could put you in a precarious financial situation. You never know when you're gonna get hit with a financial surprise. Recently, ah customer paid me and I was really excited. I was a really big payment, and I was like, Oh, That's great. I can get that gear I was thinking about a day later. It turned out that you hadn't got the approval of a spouse and he was having a major problem. Now, you know, I don't ever want to put people in precarious situations. Of course, I sent the money back. You don't always know, right. If you want to spend, you spend the money as soon as you have it before you really have it. Some surprises could happen, right? Money there. Then the money's gone. The next day, Easy come easy Go. So resist that temptation and start off with stuff That's just good enough. You know, most of the videos I recorded Talk about my Codex. I ate those when I purchased them were around $120 each. Now they're more expensive because they've been discontinued for a very long time. It's almost impossible to find a new one because they discontinued, like, seven years or something now. But I built my business on that when I first started recording videos. Here's what I did. I couldn't afford a tripod. I had one Kodak, CIA and one Laval your microphone. I think 80 C 35 from, uh, him reboots from all postal link below. I have the link somewhere else on the website already, but it's a lovelier mike that I've used before, and it's around $35. So I had those two things, and that's it. So I would. I put a top of my parents pool table in the basement. I would put a chair on top of the chair. I put three books, so the camera beehives my face gonna put a big book behind it to block the back of a smaller book in front of it. So the lens would shoot over the book and I would stand in front of it. That's step one. That's how that's how I was recording. Now behind me was a wooden wall, which means it would be shiny. So then I had to get a backdrop. I wanted a backdrop. If you try and buy like a green screen or backdrop on, Amazon could be pretty expensive. One of the reasons expensive is that fabric is heavy, so you usually send you a heavy fabric cost. So much money you can end up spending like 102 $100 for the backdrop and getting the clip and everything to hold it. So what I did is I went to the fabric store and I bought a big square felt and I would duct taped to the wall. What? I wanted a record. So in the middle of some my recordings, the duct tape, I'm gonna say it peeled off the wall and fell. Fortunately, the type of while we had it wasn't damaging. The wall would just fall off the wall. So slippery. So that was my initial setup. And then the lights. You need lights, right? Recording in a basement. How can I look good? I went to Home Depot and I bought the parts. I went through a training course. I found a training course online teacher to build your own lights, and I built my own lights and lights again cost around $30. And these were let's just say they look pretty dangerous. They were actually mean because the type of light I used, they didn't heat up there actually really effective. And they have the right type of coloration. All those things I studied color temperature to make sure about the right light bulbs and all that stuff, but I really built everything else. So I built my own entire studio for under $200. Yeah, how to use a chair. A bunch of books and stuff would fall. Sometimes it affect my recordings. But those recordings And if you go through my local consulting millionaire course record, talk about selling S e o the videos you see in there right in front of dark backdrop. That's how those were recorded. And also great those Aaron any TP So you don't have to spend a bunch of money. Really? The ratio is industriousness versus expense. So if you're in a situation we don't have a lot of money to spend. You can build everything yourself. I've done that before. And then what I did is all. Man, What? I had enough money. I bought my own light kid like one of those 150 $180 light kits. It all comes in a bag and it's got everything there. And then when I had a little more money, I bought one of those backdrops that you could hang your backdrops from from clips. Wow, I felt like a king when I could afford that. So I worked my way up to it rather than going into debt or buying, something could really afford Only when my videos were making me money driving serious customers, paying me one or $2000 a month. That's when I said, Okay, jacking up my game. I could get better video stuff and I still use those same cameras. I recorded a video on those same cameras. Oh, like a month ago, I used I have a little tripod and I record that way where I live Now most smartphones can record good enough videos to do everything you need to D'oh! So we get these temptations all the time to buy a really expensive stuff. This isn't this kind of a mix of technical and philosophical strategy. So another thing is like all you like. I need a better laptop. I was today. I was getting my laptop prepared. Had to get a new battery in my laptop battery. It's supposed to last For 600 cycles, I was almost 1200. The battery was only storing about 60% of charge. So whereas before it could last 12 hours now only last like six or seven and really was even less than that. I would notice the batter start draining. I was getting alerts all the time. She got to repair it and then you're in there nearly calm and look at all these new laptops I could buy. Render a laptop for $3000. Now, the question to ask yourself when you're looking at that upgraded thing not is a laptop were $3000. But is that difference between the one I have and the one I want were $3000. Will this new laptop improve quality, speed or effectiveness of my work Enough to justify this purchase? So sometimes you buy something because it makes things faster for you, and it speeds of how you could do a process and getting a better computer. If you're for example, you're doing a lot of video on your editing video. Ah, faster or newer computer allows you to edit and render faster. So maybe converting your video from your editing format to your final format will go from 40 minutes to 30 minutes. For every little video you make, that's a big time savings you're doing 10 videos date saving 100 minute. Today, it starts to make sense. But if you're not doing anything intensive, if you're just doing a lot of websites, stuff and email stuff and things like that, or doing a little photo shop or really, I use affinity photo, not Photoshopped. If that's what you're using. All that stuff well, you don't need that expensive computer yet. I'm always tempted. I just realized my laptop is, like more than three years old. Now it's cross that three year mark, and I only noticed, because you have to look up the model number of the year when you're getting replacement battery. But I don't need a new laptop. My laptop is crushing it. I've got this sweet new battery. Why would I want to replace it? And they even got this cool thing that you can slip into the side of a Mac book. It's called an ice slice. Oh, man, you can add an extra 200 gigs for like, 70 bucks. It's so much cheaper than buying a new hard drive. So I'm about to bump from a 500 gigabyte laptop to 700. That's a nice bump. That's a little buffer for me. And that's all because I said to the person, stores or any other ways to upgrade this. You know, Mac Books, You can't upgrade the ram. It's got a fixed when you buy it, Unfortunately, and better to know exactly why you're doing things. The reason. Let me tell you this. Why I'm even considering adding the extra 200 gigs. Spending that extra $80 is because my hard drive cells up, Uh, every few weeks at least. Sometimes it's two or three times a week. I'm always getting overfilled. I'm always running into storage problems constantly. I have four external hard drives. I have a new primary one. I have 500 big external hard drive. One terabyte a two terabyte now have a four terabytes. That kind of is Mexico hard drive for everything, but it's annoying. Always have to crack a textural hard drive. You plug it in and starts making noise because it's spinning. It's got a wheel inside solid state. So for me having a little bit more storage without adding a bunch of weight to the laptop, it makes sense because I'm running it at storages. You, if I always only storing 300 gigs at 200 years empty anyways, it wouldn't make sense. So to kind of circle back, what I'm saying is, get something that's just good enough to do the job and on Lee, when you start making money from that path, is it worth investing in stuff that's more advanced? I'm in the middle of adding some new technology to these podcast deficits. I'm trying to add chapters, and in order to add chapters, I have to get way ahead. So I bought this piece of software, lets me add chapters to an MP three file so that when you're looking at this and overcast or different podcasting APS, it will say what I'm about to talk about, and I want to put time codes in the episode. So whether you're listening through my website or you're listening through your iPhone or Android, whatever you can jump to the section you wanna listen to. That's what I want to get to and admit to a technology now, why didn't I start with that from the very beginning? Because the podcast is good enough, right? This is adding a little, has asked to adding a little more sizzle to make it a little cooler for you give you a better experience is my listener, but it's not necessary to the product. I'm a big believer in the 80 20 rule. I talked about the 80 20 rule episode way back in the beginning of this, maybe Episode 10 or 12. I talked about 80 20 rule, and I applied to every year of my business. I pi to financial decisions. Let me get what's good enough and worry about getting the best later on. Let me set up a website that's good enough to make money and improve it overtime once it's generating revenue. My members area right now, if you have one of my courses, by course, it looks awesome. But it looked like garbage for a long time. I didn't start making it look awesome until it was generating revenue and started started making making sense to improve it. These are the types of thoughts you should have in the way you look a thing and it flies to every area. You know, when you start doing video, you're thinking, Oh, I want to upload to YouTube. But that looks to amateur. I don't want to use YouTube videos of my website because I want to get another service and then you think I'll show youse. Amazon has three. Your wish Steer wins. Other service is they're really expensive. For while I was using the service was $100 a month. What a waste. Yeah, the videos were super fast, but man, one of my partners who I work with. He uses YouTube videos for sales videos, and they convert better than anything else. Free used to pay between eight and $12,000 a month for sales video hosting just to show the videos to custom to show videos on his Web site. And when he switched to YouTube, which is free, his sales went up. So not only did he get saved $12,000 a month, which is a lot of money, he's also making more total profit. So it helped him in two different directions. Sometimes we get excited and we overspend or we think, Hey, I have a bit of savings. I want the best. I don't want to do that. Always remember that everything you spend, you have to earn back and it increases the distance between you and profit If you spend $20,000 in courses, if you spend $7000 in software or buy a really expensive you camera whenever you d'oh, you have to make that money back before your profitable. We have this way of looking at things as humans where we don't look at them. That way we look at and go, you know, I just need to $100 from this movie. We don't treat the videocamera like a business expense. You make hundreds like, Hey, I'm in profit like, Well, you actually lost $6900 because you bought it seven times in our camera. You gotta make another 70 videos before you make any profit. We don't think about things that way because we aren't tracking our expenses in the right way. So what I want you to do is when you buy stuff when you spend money, when you buy anything, write it down, put it in your spreadsheet. However, you're tracking stuff, used fresh books to track all of your numbers. I really recommend getting right with that stuff. I have a bookkeeper who handles all of that for me because I have several 1000 transactions a month. In my business, some months it's closer to 50,000 transactions, money moving out, moving all these different directions, and she goes through and make sure that everything's organized. So I know how much money I spend it, how much money I make. I am not very good at that. So I brought someone in to help me. Now I did it myself for a couple of years, and I always found it to be a nightmare. And I was always having organization problems. I did bring in an external expert to help me. When you're putting together your business, when you're putting together the things that you need, control your costs as much as you can so that you're closer to profit and controlling costs. A big part that is tracking your costs. Don't think of your expenses the way you think Entertainment budget going to the movies, right? We get that feeling or buying a car. It's on the same way as when you're buying something for work. You have to separate those two things, and that's why you need to separate your bank accounts and separate your finances so that you could tell the difference. It feels really exciting to buy cools technology. I'm you know, I'm on a shopping trip right now. It feels really cool to buy like presents, right? Kids would feel really cool to buy myself something really nice, but that feeling could distract us from re Wait a minute. This is a business purchase. That's why I can tell you exactly what the things I'm buying. Hey, it would be really exciting. I would love to shoot a video right now with that Osmo Mobile, but I'm gonna save $70 by waiting another month to buy it when it's the right time and buy it from the right place because it's a business decision. If I'm able to remind myself wait, because it would be cool doesn't mean I need it. I'm not recording this. Have videos right now. I'm not recording a bunch of walk around on the video because I'm not in the beach. I'm not gonna record videos on the sidewalk like some type of maniac. That's not what I d'oh! I'm not a total blogger, right? That's not my business model. Keep those things in mind. And as you're deciding about which few you're gonna buy. Make sure you are thinking about things from the logical state of mind, not the emotional state of mind. And when you do it the right way, you convey by the right year that's good enough for now. And then when you make more money, when you're actually in the profit and you can spend profits to buy the next level up and continue to improve, that's how you build a business. That's how you control your finances. And that's how you can support and take care of your family and loved ones. Thank you for listening to this week's episode of Serve No Master. Make sure you subscribe, so you never miss another episode. We'll be back tomorrow with more tips and tactics on how to escape that rat race hit over to serve no master dot com forward slash podcasts Now for your chance to win a free coffee of Jonathan's bestseller, Serve No, master. All you have to do is leave a five star review of this podcast. See you tomorrow. Thank you for listening to this episode of the serve. No master podcast. 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