How To Invest In Your Business And Why
This has been on my mind a lot recently.
I’m super new to business but I just have the mindset that I know I need to spend money to grow my business to its potential but it's always the question on how to invest in your business and why.
I don’t know if this is because I read a lot into business whilst I had Greene Creatives as a side hustle, and I also listened to so many podcasts. Those people that I listened to and admired seemed to have invested in their business at some point and I think I just assumed that is what you need to do.
“Speculate to accumulate” as they say!
However, the more I have been working with Greene Creatives the more I have seen that other business owners don’t have the same mindset. They don’t seem to want to put money back into the business that will help them grow, and to be honest I find this crazy. I have been speaking about this a lot on my social media recently in regards to my Instagram Masterclass I am hosting next week. I am asked A LOT about social media, and out of all my services that I offer it is definitely the one I get the most DMs about from other business owners asking for advice or expressing pain points they have with the platform. Therefore, you would expect tickets to the masterclass to sell out in seconds but surprisingly it is not as easy as that.
People seem to rather moan about an issue in their business than invest and fix it.
The tickets to the class are £35 and I pointed out on my Instagram things you could spend £35 on. These included;
New clothes
Takeaway
Makeup
New set of nails
All of the above are purchases that we don’t seem to think twice about, but when it comes to the following it’s a different story.
Investing in our business
Investing in improving an issue we have with our business
Investing in tools to generate more business
Investing in marketing our business more efficiently
I think a good example to compare it to is to think of your home. When things need to be improved in our homes we know we need to invest money to see progress. It isn’t the most exciting thing to spend your money on sometimes, but we see why it needs done and can justify the spend. I think this is where business owners get lost, they are struggling to see the ‘why’ and to do that, I think you need to think from your customer’s perspective.
I have had a few experiences lately where it is clear that the customer experience is not at the forefront of some businesses. When you think of your processes, this can be from how customers buy from you, how clients book enquiry calls or how you communicate with them, is the process as streamlined as possible? Does the process make the transaction for the customer easy? Because if it doesn’t, then you need to invest to improve what you are doing.
The transaction from your customer should be the easiest part, this is the bit where all your hard work pays off. The hard part is getting your customer to convert, getting them to trust and like you enough to buy and part with money is where your focus should be. However, unfortunately some businesses put this off.
At the end of last year I wondered about my next step in terms of how to invest into business, but then I invested in a business coach. I wanted to make sure I was kicking off my self employment in what I thought was the best way. I wanted to have support from someone with experience and to have a sounding board to let me bounce ideas off. I also wanted someone to make me always consider the bigger picture, to help me work ‘on’ my business rather than ‘in’ it all the time and to finally help with my mindset.
Business coaches are a pretty big investment, was I scared? Yes. Did I think “I could probably be keeping this money, just in case I need it”? Yes. But, have I regretted it? No, not at all. In fact, I’ve just invested in another 3 months with my coach because I can see how much progress I have made in the business and mentally over the past 3 months that I want to continue with the support a little more.
What I’m trying to get at is, it is very unlikely you’ll ever invest in your business and regret it but you will regret not investing.