As an entrepreneur, how do you optimize your spend, to increase your growth, but also make sure you can keep going?

These are questions I’ve asked myself continuously as I have been #goingsolo over the last 2,5 years. In my case, I started almost from scratch – I had a 10-month buffer of money, and had to choose where to invest, and where to save to keep some runway.

These decisions are tricky. One might be tempted to invest everything – get an accountant, a lawyer, a social media manager, an assistant, a graphic designer etc early on and just accelerate – but doing so also means you have shorter time to “make it”, as you’re burning money at such a high rate.

My tactic changed over time. This has been mine (not saying it should be yours):

Early on:

• I pretty much did everything myself. No matter if I had low experience in accounting – I pushed myself through it. I took whatever free help there was, and used a lot of free online services. When I needed a service agreement, I traded favors with other consultant to get access to theirs. I made my own website with the basic web builder that came with.
• My reasons for this tactic was, that I had so few customers, and so much extra time, that it made no sense to pay money to get expert help.
  

Almost breaking even:

• I projected that, with this small monthly ‘leak’, my runway was fairly long
• I had started to make a name for myself, and could expect that to lead me to at least a similar influx of clients in the future
• My conclusion was that I could dare doing small investments that would push me over the edge of break even, before the runway ended.
• So I started investing in bursts of services, one-offs with predictable costs and no commitment. For example, fancier business cards, hired a graphical artist for my social media banner, and so on. I also paid for sessions & book to better learn to invest my runway to lengthen it even further
• My thoughts were that, the quality of me doing thing I wasn’t an expert in, was holding me back from gaining much velocity. My earlier reasoning that I “had the time” almost became a self-serving truth – if I kept spending time on the things I weren’t good at, I would never get to the position where my time would be more valuable. So I started investing, despite not yet being able to recuperate the costs.
  

Breaking even:

• A year ago, I had started to break even, but it took me all my time and energy, which held me back and felt like an endless loop.
• There definitely was something that turned on in my mind that finally, I wanted to accumulate wealth and re-build my runway rather than spending it and ending up on “minus” again.
• I also had eaten most of my runway from previous phases and investments, so there wasn’t much left to spend
• I felt like I’d ‘made it’, in terms of being able to keep being an entrepreneur, but I also felt stuck at the bare minimum.
• In my case, I looked at the other end of the formula and decided to lower my monthly costs, by becoming a #digitalnomad. I used my remaining runway to lock up my belongings in a storage, get an accountant, book an Airbnb and buy flight tickets.
• This enabled me to actually start EARNING money each month
• Now I started adding services, softwares etc on my monthly payroll, that helps me focus my time on things I’m more efficient at, and start looking strategically ahead rather than staring at my bank statement
  

Making some money (nowadays):

• I fill out my time, and could work more if I wanted to
• My formula is: if I can delegate or optimize something, and instead work and generate more revenue that what I paid said person – I do it
• I’ve been seriously considering getting an assistant (1 day/week) and a professional firm to help me redesign my website.
• However – there’s a risk doing so – what if I don’t end up saving that much time? What if the result is not what I could had made myself? I have some money, but not enough to “throw around” – I need results
• I’m being mindful and investing in affordable ‘sure’ improvements with high impact
• This means a slow growth, and I’m OK with that. As these ‘improvements’ start having effect, the pace should pick up over time.

CONCLUSION

I think in today’s climate and society; people might be expecting fast results or you might as well go back to being an employee. I can tell you right now I’d be making a hell of more money if I did – but that’s not the point. For me it’s a trade-off – I change a lifestyle where I was making a lot by investing into someone else’s game/brand/product/revenue, to a lifestyle where I invest in myself, in every sense of the word. It might not be as much monetary yet, but other values such as freedom, flexibility, opportunity, travel, meeting new people, pursue passions, work-life balance etc, makes it all worth it.