I founded the first company in our group a little more than 10 years ago. I was only 21 at the time, but I was determined to plan for the long run. Since then, I haven’t paid myself a single Forint dividend, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t spent my company’s profit. In fact, I’m spending more and more of it. To find out what and why I’m spending for, stay tuned.

When I started entrepreneurship, I invested my previous savings, and for a while that was what kept the business going. Then we slowly started growing. Since we started very little, I developed the idea that if I didn’t want to endanger the business’s liquidity, I would have to turn every Forint back. This attitude helped us grow confidently. Later, however, I had to change my mindset, as greater growth demanded me to take greater risks, therefore make bigger investments.

I think people are the best investments in the service industry, they are the key to quality. Investing in people, however, means not just paying their salary. Let's take a look at what we spend our customer revenue on:

1. Competitive, fair (legal) salary for each Personaut

I'm a capitalist, so competitive pay is understood on several levels: the level of labour market competition and the level of individual performance. We pay what each Personaut’s knowledge is worth on the market, and how much that knowledge can be sold for. This way the system is sustainable

2. Project management and other professional software

If you have professionals, give them the pro tools they need to do their best. That's why we spend a lot of money on legal software with professional support for tasks like project management, cloud storage, mailing, calendar and time tracking.

3. Efficient work environment - the office

Many think that with the digital nomad lifestyle thriving in the 21st century, offices are becoming useless. I also question their old function. They are no longer necessary as the only place of available infrastructure to work with. We create an environment for our Personauts that supports collaboration and their work. It is not mandatory to be in the office, yet they still spend a lot of time in it. Simply because they have everything they need to work in as team as efficiently as possible. That's why we rent lots of space for our office that support both peaceful work and team meetings, and sometimes just fun and relaxation too.

4. Supporting organizational culture

Person Group consists of nearly 30 people. This in itself does not necessarily demand having a full-time Chief People Officer for HR tasks, but since I believe that I must invest in people, we have created this position too. Her job is to support the development of our employees, help strengthen our corporate culture, and select the best people for our team.

5. Society

We would like to build our company like a country we would happily grow old in. This means taking success as a responsibility. That is why we are supporting Bridge Budapest, for example, or work pro-bono for the Bátor Tábor. In addition, we give the money we would spend on clients’ gifts to a family in need every year since 2012.

We also focus on knowledge sharing. We have started Person Academy 5 years ago as our internal training program, and we’re organising the fourth Person Open Night this year. We also organise open days for foreign and local students. We regularly give lectures at universities and I personally mentor several entrepreneurs to help them advance on their market.

I am grateful to my team and our clients that we can invest in these things. I am working on increasing these investments as we grow with Person Group. I believe this is the way our customers can receive the best possible service.

Richard