It’s a big day when your business makes its first profits. After all of that hard work, you’re finally getting somewhere. It might be tempting to start paying yourself a bit more and do something frivolous with that money, but you’re not quite there yet. In the future, when your business is turning over a consistent profit and you’ve got the money to spare, it’s fine to spend it on yourself. But right now, you need to think about investing that money back into the business so you can capitalize on that success and continue to grow. These are the best ways to invest your first business profits.
Business Improvement
Business improvement is a fairly general term that refers to anything that makes the day to day running of the business easier for you and your employees. For example, if you’re working on a couple of old computers that take ages to do anything, you should consider an upgrade. You could also consider some new computer software (accounting software is always a good one if you haven’t got any already). Anything that you can think of which would help your employees be more efficient and improve the customer experience is always a bonus. The best thing to do is speak with your employees and see where you could improve the business for them.
Improved Online Security
When you were a tiny business that wasn’t making any money, you probably weren’t much of a target for cyber-attacks. You still need protection either way but it doesn’t need to be as robust. But now that you are making some money, you’re going to be a target. That’s why now is a good time to invest a bit of money in your online security systems. Pay for managed IT services who can install and manage your security systems properly and react quickly in the event of a data breach. The fallout from a cyber attack can be devastating so it’s important that you protect yourself.
Marketing
Marketing in the early stages of a business is always a bit of a balancing act. You need to invest in marketing if you’re going to make any sales but you can’t spend too much on it, otherwise, you’ll run out of cash before that revenue starts coming in. That means you’ve probably been working with a fairly limited marketing budget so far. But now that you’ve got a bit more money to play with, you should go for a big marketing push to build on that momentum and keep things rolling.
Outsource
If there are aspects of running the business that you hate or cause a lot of inefficiencies, now is a good time to outsource them. For example, a lot of new business owners handle the finances themselves in the beginning because they can’t afford to pay somebody else to do it for them. But now you can afford it, it’s a good idea to outsource the stuff that you’re not very good at it so you can focus on the bigger picture.
It’s so tempting to blow your first profits on something for yourself but if you want to be in a good financial position in the long term, all of that money needs to go straight back into the business.