In my last post, I reported that small business optimism is at an all-time high. And now I want to discuss a point that all businesses should take into consideration during this excellent wave of optimism and confidence.
It’s pretty obvious, but it’s always worth repeating: it’s time to improve your company. Experts will suggest that any time is a good time to make improvements and invest in your company, but right now, it’s at “no-brainer” levels. When companies are doing well, they tend to look inward and see how they can get better. Your competition is definitely doing that, and you don’t want to be left out.
Improvements can take several forms, the most popular being personnel and equipment. A new key hire can make a big difference, and buying new (or new to you) equipment can be an investment that pays off for a decade or more. And since I’m an equipment financing guy, I’ll talk about the second point here.
Buying new equipment can expand your current offerings, and make operations much easier today. For example, adding a new production machine or delivery truck helps you right now with more revenue.
In addition, improving during this wave of optimism can also allow you to take advantage of new technology. Is there a new, more efficient software system out there? Or maybe a new production technology you’ve thought about adopting? Now’s the time.
Improving today also helps you for tomorrow – the preverbal “strike while the iron is hot”. If you improve your business now, when times are booming, you will be in a much stronger position when the inevitable pitfalls happen (and you’ve been in business long enough to know there are always pitfalls, right?) Riding a good wave is meaningless if you don’t use that wave to strengthen yourself.
Which leads me to another point – you CAN have it all – new equipment and money in the bank. If you finance equipment instead of paying cash (while also taking advantage of Section 179), you can spread the payments out over several years. This allows you to get equipment right now, which hopefully increases your revenue even more, yet make small payments over time.
So if your revenue increased over the last year, and you further improve yourself to make more revenue, but are making monthly payments instead of paying in full, you can also steadily increase your cash reserves. It’s a complete win-win.
There’s no downside whatsoever to improving your business right now. Because the last thing you want is to look back a year or three from now and say “I should have bought it then.”