10 Low Cost Purchases Under $200 That Changed My Business

You keep hearing that big investments are what unlock growth, but deep down you know that is not always true. Sometimes it is the small, overlooked purchases that quietly shift everything, how you think, how you show up, and how much you earn. If you have been second guessing where to spend your money to actually move your business forward, this one is going to hit close to home. In this episode, Omar breaks down 10 low-cost buys that have had a surprisingly massive impact on his business results. These are not flashy or complicated tools, but simple apps, subscriptions, and even a book that have reshaped the way he works and makes decisions. Each one has paid for itself over and over again, and a few might even challenge how you currently think about spending in your business. Hit play up top and discover which under $200 investments could be the quiet game changers your business has been missing. MBA2787 10 Low Cost Purchases Under $200 That Changed My Business Omar's 10 Low Cost Tools 1. How To Get Rich by Felix Dennis 2. YouTube Premium 3. Google Workspace 4. Claude Pro 5. Spotify Premium (with audiobooks) 6. DualShot Recorder App 7. Stripe 8. Kit (formerly ConvertKit) 9. Basecamp 10. Wispr Flow Recommended episodes to explore: The 5 AI Tools That Replace A $60,000 Employee (How A Team Of 3 Becomes A Team Of 1 With AI) Nathan Barry – How to Grow a Self-Funded Software Business to $34 Million and Beyond 10 Low Cost Purchases That Can Drastically Improve Your Life Watch the episodes on YouTube: https://lm.fm/GgRPPHi SUBSCRIBE YouTube | Apple Podcast | Spotify | Podcast Feed Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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  Today's episode is supported by Cash App. When it comes to Bitcoin, you may be surprised to learn that it was invented way back in 2008. But you still haven't made the jump to Bitcoin yet? Cash App makes it easy. When you buy Bitcoin on Cash App, they hold real Bitcoin for you, one to one, and you can withdraw it anytime. It works more like real money and less like something locked in an account. No extra steps, no restrictions, just access and control when you need it. With Cash App, you can actually do that. For a limited time, new customers can get $10 added to their balance. Just use code BITCOIN10 when you sign up. And, don't forget this part: send at least $5 to a friend in the first two weeks. Terms apply. Cash App is a financial services platform, not a bank.

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  Banking services provided by Cash App's bank partners. Bitcoin services provided by Block Incorporated brand. For additional information, see the Bitcoin disclosures at cash.app/legal/podcast. Small business owners, listen up. You started your business, but you can't do it alone. And that means you have to hire people to help. That's where Justworks comes in. Justworks is a payroll, benefits, and global hiring platform to unburden your brain from all the complicated small business stuff. They handle the things you can't afford to get wrong, so you don't have to worry. So you can focus on the parts of running a business that you enjoy, knowing everything else is running smoothly. You don't have to worry when it just works.

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  Today, I'm going to share with you 10 purchases that have directly made me more money in my business than anything else. Not my team, not my studio setup, not the computers I use, or any kind of equipment. These are specific purchases: books, apps, subscriptions, that genuinely change how I think, how I work, and how much I make. And the total cost of all 10 combined is under $400. So, none of these cost more than $200, and some of these cost less than a cup of coffee. Pretty crazy. And every single one of them have made me more money than it costs. And that's a huge understatement. If you take even three of these and actually use them, your business is going to start looking differently by the end of the month.

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  Let's get into it.

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  Welcome back to the $100 MBA Show. I'm your host, Omar Zenhome, where I deliver practical business lessons three times a week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, to help you start, grow, and scale your business.

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  If this show has helped in any way, it would be amazing if you could drop us a quick review on whatever app you're using to listen to this podcast right now. It helps me and my team bring new episodes every week, and more importantly, more entrepreneurs will be able to discover our podcast so you can help someone else start their journey. Thanks so much. Purchase number one, this book, How to Get Rich by Felix Dennis, costs around $15. Probably if this book costs $1,000, I would buy it. This book is the most important book I've ever read. I've reread this book more than any other book, and it's for good reason. First, I want to be clear that this title, it sounds a little gimmicky, but it's actually not a gimmick. Felix Dennis, the author of the book,

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  was a British publishing mogul. He had a huge media empire worth over $750 million, and he started from nothing. No college degree, no inherited wealth, no connections, nothing. He wrote this book in his 60s, and he held nothing back, and because he really had nothing to lose and nothing to gain, he already made it in life and in business. The core idea that really rewired how I think about business is ownership. Ownership is not the most important thing, it's the only thing in business. If you want to build real wealth, you must own the thing that you are building. That single idea was burnt in my brain by this book,

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  this idea of ownership, and it shaped every single major business decision I ever made, whether it's getting funding, whether it's getting a business partner, whatever it might be. He also says something that every entrepreneur who has ever sat on a good idea needs to hear. Execution is 1,000 times more important and more valuable than a great idea. Great ideas are dime a dozen, they're in the air, they're everywhere, but execution is what matters. Stop waiting for the perfect moment and start executing. Get busy getting rich. It's $15 on paperback. It's even cheaper on Kindle. Read it this weekend. You will not regret it. It's actually one of the funnest reads. It's comical. There's some poetry. It's a lot of fun. I really enjoyed every time I've read it.

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  And finally, why will this book make you money? Well, it reframes your mind and your relationship with ownership, with risk, with speed of execution. And it will make you faster, bolder, and allow you to make better decisions after reading it. Purchase number two, YouTube Premium. Now, a lot of people don't pay for YouTube Premium because of the cost. It's $16 a month. It's not cheap, but it's also not super expensive. And I know what you're thinking. Omar, YouTube Premium? Isn't that just so they don't have to watch ads? Yes, because YouTube Premium for me allows me to make YouTube my learning infrastructure. It's an investment where I can use it to learn anything. One of my favorite features of YouTube Premium is background play, where you can play a video and just listen to it,

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  even when your phone screen is locked. So when I'm at the gym, for example, I can listen to YouTube the same way most people listen to podcasts. But instead, I'm learning really deep stuff because some of these things I'm watching or listening to are an hour, two hour long while I'm exercising, while I'm driving, while I'm getting ready in the morning. The best business education in the world is out there. Okay, through interviews, through free courses, through case studies, through breakdowns, through tutorials. If you want to get into anything, into AI, into a new type of business, an investment, and you have no idea where to start, YouTube is a good place because you can learn the basics really quickly. And by having YouTube Premium, it makes it a lot more enjoyable. There's no interruptions. Again, the background play feature is amazing,

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  and the learning compounds. The version of you that absorbed 50 more hours of relevant business content per month is a different decision maker than the one who hasn't. And decision making is the highest lever that you can pull in your life and in your business because the better decisions you make, the more impact you'll make in your business. For less than the cost of a business book, you can get unlimited education a month. Think about all the time you're wasting on ads. All those minutes add up to hours and days. So why will it directly make you money? Well, better decisions come from better knowledge. Like I mentioned, this removes every friction point between you and the best business content on the planet. And I gotta say, it's a great entry to get free, high-level education.

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  That also is flexible, so you can listen to it wherever you go. Purchase number three, Google Workspace. This is probably one of the best bang for your bucks in terms of tools for your business. It's $7 a user per month. I know this looks boring on the surface, but by having a Google Workspace account, you get Gmail, you get a business email, you get Google Drive, you get Google Docs, you get Google Calendars, you get Google Meet, you get Google Slides. You get all these softwares that you can use to amplify your business. Now, you're probably already using some version of this for free with whatever at gmail.com, with an email like that. But here's what you're paying with Google Workspace specifically that changes for your business.

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  You get a custom domain. So for example, [email protected] instead of [email protected]. That's not vanity, it's credibility. I mean, you're gonna trust somebody with an actual domain email to be a credible business. The moment you have a professional email address, you have a different category of business in the mind of your client, of your customer, of a partner, of a collaborator. Now, beyond that, as you start growing and adding team members, you have your entire team in one integrated suite with shared drives, with shared calendars, with collaborative documents that allow people to work on it at the same time, like a spreadsheet. Everyone's working in the same systems. Files are never lost. Documents are always the latest version.

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  Meetings are scheduled back and forth, and you see what's on everybody else's calendar, so you know who's busy and who's not. It's super amazing. At $7 per user per month on the starter plan, this is the most cost-effective, legitimate, infrastructure purchase that you could buy for your business. It'll allow you to level up very quickly for very little. So why will this? To directly make money, well, professional email builds instant credibility. Number one. Number two, it's a shared infrastructure that eliminates any kind of operational friction between you and anybody in your business and it kills wasting time. It increases your productivity and allows you to start spending your time on the things that are making you revenue. Today's episode is supported by Rosetta Stone. I absolutely love Rosetta Stone because it's

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  helping me learn Italian faster than I can ever imagine. Why do I want to learn Italian? Well, who doesn't love Italy? But of course Nicole's family is Italian and I'd love to have some quick Italian conversations with her mom and Rosetta Stone just came out with Rosetta Stone Sapphire, their biggest launch in over a decade. One of the coolest features is chat missions, which turns conversation practice into a game. With chat missions, you're put in interactive scenarios and given three objectives. A mission to accomplish, like asking how much something costs, ordering a cold brew coffee, or getting a wifi password. Along the way, you get real time corrections and feedback to help you sound more natural and confident. It's a supportive way to build confidence before putting your language skills to use

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  in real life. I've been using Rosetta Stone for over two years and I actually can have some small Italian conversations with Nicole's mom now. Just the other day, she asked me, when are you traveling? And I said dopa domani mattina, which means after tomorrow morning. She was incredibly impressed I was able to answer in Italian. How could you put a price tag on a happy mother in law? If you want to take your language skills to the next level, don't wait to try Rosetta Stone Sapphire. The $100 ratio listeners can get 20% off the Rosetta Stone Sapphire subscription when they sign up today. This gets you access to Rosetta Stone Sapphire in 25 languages. Support for today's episode comes from Square. You probably know Square is the thing you tap your card on at your favorite coffee shop, restaurant, salon, or local store.

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  But for the person running that business, Square is a whole lot more than a way to get paid. Square brings the tools you need to run and grow your business together in one system. From payments on appointments to staff, inventory, sales, and customer relationships. Whether you're selling lattes, cutting hair, detailing cars, running a restaurant, or starting something Square keeps your business tools working together so you can focus less on managing the moving parts and more on what's next. And right now, listeners can get up to $200 off Square hardware when you sign up at square.com/go/mba. That's S-Q-U-A-R-E.com/go/mba. Visit Square to get started because running a business is complicated enough. Your tools don't have to be.

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  Purchase number four, Claude Pro. Costs $20 a month and it's worth every penny. I use Claude for countless things. Okay, I use it to refine my ideas. I use it to research. I use it to analyze. I use it to stress test decisions before I make them. I also use it to plan events, holidays, all kinds of stuff. Now, the thing that separates Claude from every other AI tool from my specific use is that it learns my voice. The more you work with it consistently, the more it outputs something that sounds like you, not like generic AI. Shorter sentences, direct delivery, the rhythm of how it communicates with you is amazing. My writing time is down by a third.

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  I'm talking about literally sending WhatsApp messages or even messages to my team where I just blab it and it will make it concise and then boom, put it into the message. For any business that produces content, proposals, emails, pitches, documentation, Claude is a multiplier. $20 a month is bonkers. Incredible value. Why? It directly makes you money faster. Better communication equals dollars. It impacts sales and it impacts retention. It impacts how your brand is perceived. One well-written proposal or email can be worth thousands. Purchase number five, Spotify Premium with audiobooks. This is something a lot of people don't know. Spotify Premium, depending on what plan you're on, could be $11 to $16 a month.

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  But Spotify is not just music. You get audiobooks now with Spotify Premium. And combine that with your podcast library. It's one of the most complete learning platforms available anywhere. By the way, How to Get Rich is an incredible audiobook. It's one of my favorite audiobooks. The narrator is a master. Incredible. Here's the discipline I apply. When I'm working in my office and I have my headphones in, I actually listen to music while I'm working. It kind of motivates me, helps me. Some people don't like music with words. It doesn't really bother me. It doesn't mix me up. But I like to listen to business books, biographies, interviews while I'm not working, while I'm in the car, while I'm commuting, while I'm at the gym, working out.

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  Any moment that used to be kind of just dead is now time for me to improve my brain. I've absorbed so many books on Spotify. In fact, I'm going over another book. I'm listening to this book. I read it first time. Now I'm listening to it. It's called No Rules Rules. It's Reed Hastings' book from Netflix, and it's an incredible book. For me, the audiobook edition to Spotify Premium is a no-brainer now for Spotify Premium. No ads, endless music, like all the music in the world ever invented. That's crazy. Podcasts, and there's more coming down the line. So why is it directly making money? Well, the entrepreneur who reads and learns wins. And if it's easy for you to learn, you will consistently win. Where are your great ideas going to come from?

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  Where are you going to cultivate the perspective you need to make the right decisions? Love this purchase. If this episode's serving you well and you're loving it, then I highly recommend you subscribe to the channel because I have an upcoming episode I can't wait to share with you. It's called "Don't Make These Mistakes When Starting a Business From Home", which is where a lot of people start their businesses. But there's some things that you can really do to damage your potential of success. So you want to make sure that you steer clear from these things so that you can have the best chance of winning in business. Hit subscribe so you don't miss it. Purchase number six. This is an iPhone app. It's called DualShot App. It only costs $10 and it's a one-time fee. You don't pay every month.

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  And it changed the quality of my content overnight and my productivity in so many ways. Well, what is DualShot? It's a very simple app. And what it does, it allows you to shoot both vertical and horizontal videos at the same time. Meaning, if I'm shooting a video, like I'm traveling... And I'm not sure if this video is going to be used for social or for a podcast episode for long form, meaning 16 by nine being wide, or it's going to be tall for Instagram or Tik Tok or whatever it might be, or YouTube shorts, then I just use this app and it shoots both of them at the same time and it works for back cameras and front cameras. So when I hit record, it actually captures two videos in my camera roll. So then I have both of them. I don't need to worry about

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  changing or shooting twice and changing the angle or using two cameras at the same time. So brilliant. $10 once saves you time, saves you energy. Why is this making you more money? Better content drives more views, more engagement and more audience growth. This allows you not to be lazy and say, oh, I don't know if this is going to be, you know, Instagram video. I don't know if this is going to be something I'm going to use as B-roll later. Uh, too hard bucket. Not going to do it today. No, it just gets you to shoot everything with this app and you have two files that you can use at all times. And what I do is just upload it to my G drive. So my team has it so they can use it for anything they need to use it for. Purchase number seven, Stripe.

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  Woo, I love Stripe. Stripe is absolutely free. You only pay when you make a sale. They take a percentage of the sale. And for the most part, it's a very reasonable percentage, 2.9% plus 30 cents per transaction. I think that's the standard rate for most areas. But what do you get with Stripe that costs nothing every month? Without Stripe, you can't get paid. What's great about Stripe, it handles everything. You can start selling subscriptions, one-time payments, invoices. You could just send an invoice and gives the customer a button. They click it. They could just pay with their credit card. Done. Automatic receipts, payouts, schedules. It has all the financials in there. Tells you're your data, your financial metrics, how much money you're making every month. If you're still using PayPal or manual bank transfers, you're making things

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  difficult, not only of the customer, but yourself. Stripe is one of the best products ever invented in the last 30 years, and that is no exaggeration. Why? Because Stripe removes friction and friction at checkout is one of the most expensive things that you can encounter in your business. So make it easy for your customers to buy from you and Stripe makes it easy. Why does it directly make money? It literally enables you to make money online. It removes the checkout friction directly by increasing conversions. Setup takes literally an hour, okay, from start to finish. If you know your way around software and you're kind of techie, it could take about 20 minutes. It takes me about 10 minutes because I love Stripe so much and I use it so much. But we're literally strapped for everything. We sell our programs through Stripe. We sell our products.

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  We sell our tickets to our events. It's brilliant. Purchase number eight, Kit, formerly known as ConvertKit. It's an email marketing software and it's absolutely free to get started. Your first thousand subscribers are free. And your email list is the most valuable asset in your business because it allows you to build a relationship directly with your customers and make them offers. The internet is a busy place. Social media, YouTube, ads, they're everywhere and they're distracting people. So people's inboxes are still the most sacred place in their digital world. So if you have access to that space by giving them a newsletter, you are able to access them and be able to build that relationship. An email list subscriber is a whole lot more valuable than a social media follower, than

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  a podcast download, than a YouTube subscriber because you can go back and forth. What's great about your email list is that you don't have to worry about an algorithm. There's no platform dependency. There's no risk or rule to change the way you do business or wipe you out overnight. If Instagram disappeared tomorrow, I still have my email list and I still have that relationship with my audience. Kit is a great way for you to manage that email list, to communicate with people, to send out your newsletters. They have templates for landing pages. They have templates for you to collect emails. They have templates for your newsletter layout, all kinds of stuff. And the founder of Kit, Nathan Barry, who's been on the podcast, is an old friend of mine. And I know that it's built on integrity and the software just works. And that's what I love about it and that's why I've been a customer for so long. Why is it directly going to make you money?

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  Well, email is the highest converting marketing channel that exists. That's what the data shows. That's what my experience tells me. Every subscriber on your list is directly aligned to you, meaning aligned to becoming a customer. So you can build that asset over the years, that email list, and it compounds forever. And you can continue to build that relationship and cultivate those relationships so that you can then turn people that are just casual observers of what you do to thriving customers that are getting a lot of value. Purchase number nine, Basecamp. Basecamp is a project management tool. It's only $15 a user per month. The moment you have more than one person working for you, which is yourself, you're going to have a communication problem and you're going to need a way to collaborate with people.

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  And Basecamp is my favorite tool for that. Not because it has everything, not because it has every feature under the sun, but because it's simple and it works. Listen, the reason why I'm recommending Basecamp is because you're going to actually use it. And it's going to help you stop missing deadlines. It'll allow you to make sure the tasks don't fall between the cracks. It allows you to manage any kind of project, like publishing a YouTube video, that's a project. Like writing a book, like launching a new product. And it has built-in team communication tools designed to be simple enough that everybody actually uses it. In fact, when we hire new team members, and we just added new team members, when we introduce them to Basecamp, it's so intuitive, they don't need a tutorial. What I love about Basecamp is that it has all the tools you need

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  instead of you having several tools and several logins. You don't need chat separate. You don't need Slack. You don't need Google Docs separate. Everything's integrated. So that way you can just go to one place to get everything done. And for $15 per user per month, this is a no-brainer. Now, why will this make you money directly? Well, operational efficiency is revenue. Every hour you lose on miscommunication or disorganization is an hour not spending on making money that grows the business. Okay, you don't want to waste time on things you don't need to waste time on. You need a well-oiled machine so the machine is available for your customers. Purchase number 10, Whisperflow. This is one of my favorite softwares ever.

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  I saved this one for last because it's a multiplier for everything that you do in your business. Whisperflow is an AI voice dictation tool that works in every app, on every device. You speak, it types instantly. It's perfect. You know the dictation app that you have native to your phone? For example, it's rubbish compared to Whisperflow. Why? Because Whisperflow just listens to everything you have to say. You let go of the bun and all of a sudden, the AI comprehends what you're saying and cleans it. It up and makes it perfect. No filler words, no mistakes, no formatting errors or typos. I'm the king of typo, so I love it. And the oh my God moment for me was when I realized I no longer need to type a single word in my workday. I just use Whisperflow constantly.

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  I can use it on my computer, I can use it on my phone, I can use it just to literally do a brain dump and a to do list for myself like, hey, gotta go to the ATM before I go to the office. When I get to the office, I gotta open the door for the contractor. It's gonna put up the sound panels in our sound studio. That's gonna happen at 11 o'clock and I could just have a stream of consciousness and it will make the list. And I don't just use it to make a to do list. Everything I do, every prompt and Claude is dictated with Whisperflow. Every email I reply to is dictated by Whisperflow. Every WhatsApp message, every Basecamp update, every single note is dictated with Whisperflow. And I want to be clear, Whisperflow is not coming up with any new words. It's not kind of changing anything other than just doing the cleanup of your speech.

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  Now, what this effectively means is that Whisperflow quadruples the speed in which I can interface with every app. This is not a small gain. It compounds across a full workday, across every day. I get so much more done with Whisperflow and it's only $15 a month. It's a steal. So why does it directly make you money? Well, speed is leverage. Four times faster input means four times more done in the same time. This multiplies the ROI of every other tool on the list. So every tool I mentioned today, it just gets better and better because of Whisperflow. So there you have it, 10 purchases, under $400 combined, every single one of them directly tied to making you more money. None of them more than 200 bucks. Amazing.

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  The best investment in your business is not always the expensive ones. Some places are small things that make a big difference. And sometimes only like $15 can change everything, like Whisperflow, for example. If this episode was valuable to you and you want more valuable business lessons, then I highly recommend this episode that we recently published called "The Five AI Tools That Replace A $60,000 Employee." Whatever app you're using right now, you can just scroll back up and you could find this episode. I worked really hard on this one. I did an incredible amount of research so that it's on a silver platter for you. So you know exactly how to combine these tools to save you time and money and be more productive.

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  If you found today's episode helpful and you want more practical business lessons to help you start, grow, and scale your business, the best thing you could do is subscribe to this podcast. Hit subscribe or follow on your favorite podcast app, the one that you're using right now, whether it's Apple or Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts. By hitting subscribe, you get our next episode automatically, and it's the best way to support the show. It's absolutely free, and it's a way for you to commit to growing your business. And now that you've subscribed, I'll check you in the next episode.

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  Mazda has been named Consumer Reports' safest new car brand. It starts with our approach. Every Mazda comes standard with proactive safety features, so you're more aware of what's around you, more focused on the road ahead, and ready before problems ever start. Mazda: More of what matters most to you. Go to MazdaUSA.com to learn more. Consumer Reports does not endorse or promote any product.