If you are an entrepreneur, you may be looking to broaden your financial portfolio. However, you want to do so in a way that is smart and measured. Sure, you may be willing to take risks when it comes to your business dreams and goals, but when it comes to finances, taking a more balanced approach may be all you’re willing to do. Here are five investment tips for entrepreneurs that can be extremely useful.

Spread Out Your Investments from the Get-Go

Speaking to any professional investor, one of the top investment tips they tend to give is to diversify. You never want to put all your investment into one stock or business. This is just about the riskiest move you could make. Should that company do poorly, you can kiss any potential profits goodbye.

Diversifying your investments means you spread things around, choose companies in different markets and industries, and even vary the types of investments themselves. By doing so, you have a higher chance of at least one of them paying off.

What Kind of Investor Will You Be?

You should also decide what kind of investor will you be. Are you willing to play the long game and invest in stocks that will grow over time, or do you like the more risky moves where you get in and out rather quickly?

Much of this will come down to how much work you want to put into monitoring your investments. With the long-haul moving stocks, you probably won’t have to watch them as closely as the whole idea is that you invest and then let it be.

Risk Is a Part of Investing

For all the talk of playing things safe and avoiding risk, many experts will say that, to realize big gains, you’re going to need to take a risk. It comes down to what you’re willing to risk, and how big of an investment you’re willing to make. As an entrepreneur, you understand the concept of risk better than anyone, and playing the stock market always involves risk.

Know When the Right Time to Sell Is

The biggest key to making a profit is to know when to sell. It needs to be at a time when the stock is at its highest value, and it likely won’t increase much more. But to be sure about that, you’d need a crystal ball, so there’s never a guarantee.

Experts suggest you follow the markets, watch them closely and use online tools like a stock profit calculator to figure out what your potential profits would be. If it seems like a healthy profit, then it may be the best time to sell.

Flexibility Can Serve You Well

Finally, it’s good to be flexible and open-minded. Getting too set in your ways when it comes to investments means you could miss out on potential opportunities and risk building a portfolio that isn’t balanced. With each investment opportunity that comes up, try to see it with fresh clear eyes so you can probably weigh the pros and cons. Keeping things as-is and stagnant may not serve you well in the long term.

And if you feel in over your head, ask questions. Learning as much as you can about the markets and investments, in general, means you can make better-informed decisions at each moment.

Each of these investment tips can be exactly what entrepreneurs need to make smart and sound investments. It’s not just about what makes sense financially at the moment, but what will offer the best returns in the end, regardless of how long the timeline may be.