No doubt, for business, money is fuel. Without money, a business cannot function. It buys required resources to create value for customers. Or as Tim O’Reilly once said, “Money is like gasoline during a road trip. You don’t want to run out of gas on your trip, but you’re not doing a tour of gas stations.”

Money is a measurable success criterion for comparing ideas and business models. Roughly speaking, it is the prime enterprise activity metric. Looking at the ledger, you can easily tell if an idea or a business model made you some cash or it’s just a money drain. For that, you need to keep a ledger, obviously.

Money is a powerful influence instrument, too. By offering a better salary you can make a person switch jobs. Substantial recurrent purchases for your company can be a good reason to bargain with suppliers and adjust their business model.

A good reputation is tightly connected to money. Paying your employees and suppliers on time creates a good image of you as a business person. When it occurs to me someone says they got less than was agreed on, I pay out the difference immediately.

As they say: “You have only one chance to make a first impression”, so you got to do your best to get the good one.

And in this sense, your renommee consist of pleiades of such impressions that you “craft” on lingering basis throughout deeds and even philosophy. Earning a sterling reputation is a hard row to hoe, but it’s definitely worth it and much more valuable than a couple of bucks.

How people do business is often influenced by the way they perceive money. But is money the ultimate goal?

If you’re an IT professional or entrepreneur in the present-day world, I’m pretty sure your basic needs for food, shelter, clothes, entertainment, and even travel are covered by the income that may just be industry average. Under these circumstances, collecting zeros in a bank account is boring.

Moreover, if you do something well enough for an extended period of time, zeros start piling up in your account on their own. Skillset, experience, and track record, just like the time itself work in your favor. So why focus on zeros if there are much cooler things to be done?

Money can be turned into a new activity, new department within your organization, work conditions improvement, or even a spin-off business. At Redwerk we invested into building a spin-off brand QAwerk specialized in quality assurance services. Two years later it started to pay off and it now has its own customers, totally unrelated to those of Redwerk.

There are investments that can be both good for business and serve as a means of saving. Real estate is not too risky, so I bought a two-story office for Redwerk and it was very fun design, build from scratch and decorate. If we grow out of it, I can rent the space to someone else. There are also apartments we use as corporate flats for employees and customers traveling between our two locations, which we rent out on Airbnb otherwise.

Investing money into the team skillset can be done by sending your employees to a professional event of their choice. At Redwerk we have 50/50 policy, where the company compensates half of the expenses, and the time spent listening to speeches or in workshops is also paid.

What do you like investing into profits from your business?