How To Turn Leftovers Into Growth Drivers

There is one thing you can expect after a Thanksgiving holiday. No, I’m not talking about Black Friday or Cyber Monday. I’m talking about leftovers. No matter how hard you try, it always happens. Your fridge has filled up with the leftovers of past days and week.  And I hope that you didn’t throw away perfectly good food. The turkey carcass or ham bones make for great soup, the mashed potatoes are repurposed into potato pancakes, and even the cranberry sauce can be mixed with cream cheese to make a great bagel spread.

Have you ever considered using leftovers in your business? Yes, I said leftovers. The abandoned equipment and forgotten things that often find their way to dark warehouse corner covered in cobwebs or lying dormant in some storage lot. There can be good life in the scraps or remnants of other people’s dreams.

Used equipment can be a viable choice for you if you’re planning on growing your business. Every piece of equipment that you now operate is used equipment. In an expansion, replacement, or new plant construction why not add more? With used equipment the return on investment can be substantially higher than with new. Growing your business during economic uncertain times may not be feasible because of high and rising costs of new equipment but purchasing used equipment may be an attractive solution.

If you’re not the leftover type, an alternative solution may be to rent the equipment you need. Many small businesses start out working almost entirely with rental equipment. As time goes on, some choose to expand their equipment fleet, while others stick to renting. Buying it is an investment that brings pride of ownership and tangible assets, and marks you as a going concern but renting it can make your life easier and your accounting simpler.

In the end, the decision to buy or rent can boil down to the kind of business you want to run. Is it a lean, almost virtual company where your biggest asset is your expertise, or a more traditional, large-scale company with the material assets to prove it?