How to grow your small business: Don't be afraid to spend money early (2024)

Are you a small business owner or freelancer who think you can't afford to invest in your business? You might be wrong! Spending money on your business is a key ingredient to growth, and even small amounts of money can get you further. Here are four reasons why you should stop being afraid of spending money and put those funds (even small ones) to work for you, just like I've done.

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1. Don't be afraid to spend money to grow your small business — it will help you grow and succeed

If someone had suggested in 2022 that I could pay a freelancer to complete specific tasks for me, I would definitely say: No, I can't afford that now. My mindset was that it was best to keep the expenses in my business as low as possible, as that would mean more for me! But I've changed my ways, and here's why:

Time is money! And it's wise to invest money in your business in the beginning so that you can make more money in the future. One way to do this in the beginning is to outsource tasks to people living in countries with lower living costs than your own. This way, you can pay people a decent hourly rate, even on a budget.

I don't know where you are in the world, but chances are high that you can deduct your business expenses from your tax bill. Ultimately, you indeed end up with more — and maybe spending more won't affect your earnings much!

Psst: Check out my blog post on goal setting for creatives! I've found a way that really works for me, and I hope it can work for you too!

This picture was generated using my favourite A.I – Ideogram. A very affordable alternative to Midjourney.

2. Hire experts to help you with tasks that you don't know how to do or don't have time for

If one daunting task takes you four hours to complete because you find it hard, boring, or a combination of both, and someone else can complete the same task in an hour or two, why not pay them to complete it for you? Hopefully, you can make more money in those four hours if you focused on work, which brings in more money than it would cost to pay someone to do a specific task.

In 2023, I temporarily hired someone to help me with my Pinterest account. I wanted to utilize Pinterest to gain more traffic and place my content in front of more eyeballs, but I found it hard to make a pin and upload it once a week. The ideal on Pinterest is to post daily!

I didn't have the interest or time to do that, so I posted a job on Upwork and got a lot of replies. I found a fantastic Pinterest manager, and thanks to her, I'm slowly but steadily putting links to my products on Etsy, Creative Fabrica, and blog posts out there to be found by the right people. I put in around 100 to 150 dollars a month on this. I didn't have much extra cash, but figured it was a good investment.

This picture was generated using my favourite A.I – Ideogram

3. Invest in good equipment, services or tools that will make your work easier

You don't need a super fancy camera or the fastest computer on the market, but spending money on online services that can help you grow your business or automate tasks for you is a great investment!

In general, I think having an investment mindset is a great skill to practice even from the get-go as a business owner. My two best low-cost investments in services is my Creative Fabrica subscription and Ideogram subscription. Creative Fabrica is only $59 a year and gives me access to commercial use rights on everything from mockups, templates (webdesign, canva templates, social media templates etc), fonts, backgrounds, digital paper and clipart. This subscription gives me everything I need for anything I want to design.

Ideogram is $20 a month, and I use it to make beautiful pictures to illustrate my blog posts, it can create Instagram and Pinterest pins from scratch, and I even make clipart I sell and make passive income on. I've had great success using it for Pinterest pins as it is so good at generating text and beautiful graphics. Before using Ideogram for Pins I never got many clicks from my Pinterest, now I'm closing in on 500 clicks a month to my blog from these pins!

4. Don't be afraid of investing in yourself by taking courses and learning new skills

This is one of my favorite ways to grow my small business by investing in myself! Taking courses and learning from people I admire has been very valuable for me, and some of the courses I've taken have even led me on new career paths. I've worked as a freelance journalist, translator, and social media manager after completing online courses in these fields!

You should check out my blog post 6 Great low-cost programs for small business owners, if this is a way you want to invest in yourself. I've also written a blog post called 9 Free Resources for Small Online Business Owners, where you find tips on getting everything from design resources mockups, fonts, and graphics to great tips from some of the best business coaches out there – completely free. If you're bilingual and want to work from home, take a look at my post on earning money by translating, and check out the free course I link to there.