The Small Business Column: You have to do more than play it safe to grow your business

I recently came to a crossroads in my business. The past six months for us have been very good — better than we expected. However, every now and again I get this voice in my head saying ‘you can do better’.

I’ve been looking to get this piece of new equipment for a while, but its price tag is high. Our business funds show that we are in touching distance of being able to get it, but it means using a huge amount of capital that we’ve built up. That being said, I am in danger of ‘pulling a Coppinger’.

A few years ago Peter Coppinger from Teamwork.com in Cork spent over €500,000 on the domain name ‘teamwork.com’ for his business. As he once put it: “I remember walking into the office and sitting down to tell the guys that all that cash surplus we’d built up after years of boot strapping was going to be blown on a domain name.