better business blog

Tips and stories to add value to you and your organisation

A ‘Cost vs Investment’ Mindset

5 March 2017

What’s interesting to me as a business coach is that once we start to make some money in our business it’s tempting to hang on to it. After all, we have taken a risk and set up a business, we’ve worked hard for minimal returns and now we have a small profit to shout about we want to hang on to our cash.

However, we can forget that at the start of our journey we happily invested money into equipment, training, staff, business cards, a website and so on. We can fall into the trap of assuming our investment days are over and now we can rake in the cash and pop open a bottle of fizzy!

When I started Primary People Ltd over 14 years ago I spent a wad of cash on becoming a properly qualified psychometric assessor. The next year I joined a Transactional Analysis (TA) training group and the year after …realised that ongoing CPD was never going to end. I had falsely assumed that after a couple of years I could divert the money spent training straight into my pocket and then one Spring day, when I was preparing my budget for the next financial year, I realised that if I wanted to stay in business I needed to keep on investing in my own skills.

I’ve published 6 books about business and career management and love supporting people to get a job, and yet even after 10 years of being an author it never ceases to amaze me when people expect to get  job without spending any money on a book, or a coach, or any interview practice. Job hunting is tough, competitive and tiring, so of course it makes sense to wing it and trust to luck. Er no. Not really.

Business is the same. If we see development and marketing spend, for example, as a cost then we run the risk of resenting it as an unnecessary intrusion into our profits. However, if we view this expense as an investment then we are more likely to budget consistently and we will keep on growing and out-pacing our competition.

Putting this into real terms for a minute, I have personally invested over £20,000 in my own TA training. Sounds a lot doesn’t it. Then when I share that this investment has earned me over £500,000 it suddenly makes good sense. A no-brainer. Value for money.

This week we can all take a fresh look at our budgets and can ask ourselves if we are grudging the costs of running our business, or smiling at the wise investment we are making in our success.

And if you know someone who is looking for work then invite them to check out Job Hunting 3.0 on Amazon and suggest they buy any book about CV writing, interview skills and so on. It’s an investment that makes sense. The herd trust to luck. Invest in yourself and beat them out of sight!

Next week: Quitting Is Cool