Invest in Your Business
why shifting from a cost mindset to an investment mindset changes how you run your business
When we assess how our business is doing financially, one of the things we do is look at how much money is coming in against how much money is going out. Bare minimum, we need enough coming in to match what’s going out. Ideally, we want more (much more) on the instream.
We often call what’s going out expenses or, more commonly, costs.
It’s accurate. It’s easy to understand. It also relegates the things that fall into this category to mere numbers in a spreadsheet — and ones you want to minimize.
What if instead of calling your expense lines costs, you called them investments?
When we invest in something, we bestow it with value. We believe it’s going to pay off positively in the long run. We nurture and monitor our investments.
By changing our perception of the things we spend money on as a business, we see immediate shifts, like:
People are an investment, which expands what we should do for them to help them do their best work.
We’re here to make real impact, so we need to measure investments to see how they performed. Did they deliver the intended results?
Infrastructure becomes less scary, more foundational for growth.
And if you’re a nonprofit, that dreaded admin number becomes an investment so you have the people and tools you need to make things happen.
Consider pulling your expense lines out of your budget and putting them into another spreadsheet. Simplify it to three columns: what the expense is called, what dollar amount you’ve invested in that area, and then a third column titled ‘value.’
This third column is where you can write a short description of what this does for your business as an investment.
What are you looking at differently? What can you communicate better to others? How will you monitor and nurture the investments going forward?
When you make this shift, you focus on the value you provide, enabling you to thrive in the purpose economy.
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