As an entrepreneur, sometimes it can be hard to invest in your business. At the end of the day, the money you put into it is the money that comes directly out of your pocket.
I once had a client who really needed to invest in a software to help them navigate their leads, kick off a marketing campaign, and hire another person. Taking these steps will cut into their take-home pay, but it’s necessary for growth. Sometimes, you have to take a step back in your revenue to take your business five steps forward.
I always encourage my clients to weigh the benefits of adding an additional expense. How much more business can they bring in if they hire a new person? Can they double the work they’re producing by having another person there to share the load? How much potential revenue would that change bring in? The challenging part, however, is that sometimes you may not see the return on that investment for months or even years.
If you’re making a change to your business — hiring someone new, starting a marketing campaign, buying new software — it’s important to have a process in place to evaluate the return on your investment (ROI). The best way to do that is by creating a profit and loss statement and tracking the progress on it every month. This statement will show you how much money is going out and how much money is coming in, which will tell you if your new investments are working.
Investing in your business is incredibly important for many reasons. Mainly, it can provide a means for your company to innovate, develop and grow. Some investments I’ve made in D2 Branding haven’t produced a return, but every one has helped us learn something valuable.
Here are five reasons why you must invest in your business:
If you invest, you will grow.
You can’t make more money if you don’t invest in your business. Similarly, your bottom line can’t increase if you don’t offer additional products/services or hire additional staff. As an entrepreneur, there comes a point where you can’t do everything yourself. You have to start outsourcing or hiring in order to get the job done. Whether you’re investing in products to help you run your business more smoothly, hiring a business coach or outsourcing tasks, spending the money is worth it.
Investing can help alleviate stress.
If you’re doing everything in your business right now and find yourself working 12-hour days just to get it all done, you will burn out. Once you start to delegate and invest in people and new processes, your life will get simpler. You need to give yourself time for self-care or you will become overworked, which could lead to loss of passion for the work you’re doing.
Investing legitimizes your business.
Once you start to invest in your business, you start to take it seriously and things feel much more real. You will work harder to get a return if you’ve put money into something.
Investing allows you to operate in your genius.
One of the benefits of investing in your business is that lets you focus only on what you’re best at. There’s no need to do things you don’t excel at, and they probably take you much longer to do than the things that are your strengths. If you invest in your company by outsourcing or hiring staff, your first hire should be someone who excels in what you’re worst at. For me, this hire was an accountant. Once I delegated those duties to a new hire, my life became more peaceful and profitable.
Investing will save you time and money in the long run.
If your processes for your business aren’t optimized, chances are you’re spending too much time doing things that could be automated. Investing in your company allows you to spend more time on things that bring in revenue, like sales.
You will end up saving time and money in the long run! If your processes in the business.
I encourage you to make it a priority to invest in your business. You don’t have to do everything at once, but take a step back, look at what’s working and what isn’t and decide what to invest in first. You won’t regret investing in your business. If anything, you’ll probably regret not doing it sooner.
