While launching Early Riser, motivated by fully supporting myself as an entrepreneur, I set ambitious goals to move fast, and grow as quickly as possible. To make these goals a reality, I knew I couldn’t do everything myself, and I would need to make smart investments to help scale my business.
Don’t get me wrong, I wanted to do everything myself - as I’m sure most entrepreneurs do. However, I recognized that the best way to meet my ambitious goals would be to use my time strategically doing things that only I could do, and free up as much of my time and energy as possible to focus on just those things. This framework essentially helped me determine where and how I should invest in my business.
Whether I’m investing time, energy, or money, my goal is always the same: maximize the return on investment - even if this means leveraging one investment to maximize others. With this framework, I made a plan to invest money in my business to:
- Save me time (through tools that streamline and organize communication)
- Save me stress (outsourcing things I’m not great at, or simply don’t want to do)
- Speed up results (building systems, curating strategies, and improving my craft)
Keeping this in mind, I set out to find the tools, people, and systems that would give me the best return on my investment.
INVESTING TO SAVE ME TIME
I quickly realized that the best way for me to save time is to organize and automate my tasks, meetings, and workflows. With the proper software and tools in place, my workday could be as seamless and efficient as possible. Here are a few of the tools I purchased to invest in my business, and save me time:
Calendly
To schedule meetings and facilitate client calls, this online booking tool allows you to set custom availability based on your schedule, and syncs with your calendar to avoid conflicts. I use Calendly to schedule client syncs, discovery calls, research interviews and networking meetings - without any of the back and forth via email to find a time that works for all. Once a time and date are selected, a meeting is scheduled automatically, and even sends reminder emails to meeting guests to completely streamline the process.
Wave
As an entrepreneur, it’s crucial to stay on top of your finances! This accounting software generates invoices and tracks business transactions, so everything is filed in one place. This tool is easy to use and currently free!
Loom
Easily one of my favourite tools for communicating faster, Loom lets you record your screen while simultaneously talking on camera. Rather than sending a text-heavy email or document, Loom allows you to send a video link to recipients, where you can easily walk through processes, or help explain ideas or issues while visually displaying the content you are working on.
Figma
A visual design tool used for building wireframes and prototypes for web design, this browser-based tool is accessible for everyone to use! With Figma, you can also collaborate with teammates and clients in real-time, and communicate visually with notes and comments. Think of this as a virtual whiteboard!
Notion
Where do I start with my love for Notion? Introduced to me by web designers, I have grown to be so attached to this product tool. Described as an “everything and anything” tool, Notion combines documents, tables, task management, and more into one platform that you can build and customize however you’d like.
INVESTING TO SAVE ME STRESS
Next to tackle was the best ways to save my energy. As a creative and ambitious entrepreneur, I recognized that even though I could do something, it doesn’t necessarily mean that I should be doing that thing. Additionally, if something wasn’t exciting to me, I knew this was also an opportunity to invest to save my energy, stress, and sanity! The key to investing my personal energy in my business properly is outsourcing tasks to lighten my load.
Social Media
One of the first things I outsourced when Early Riser first launched was social media. This space was completely new to me, and therefore one of the biggest learning curves that I faced early on. To help alleviate the stress of figuring it all out alone, I sought out counsel and content support from Babe Creative and Courtney Wiemer.
Copywriting
Another one of the first things I outsourced, and the one I continue to outsource to this day, is copywriting. I’m not a terrible writer, but I don’t consider it to be one of my strengths. Writing takes me a long time, and I can often get frustrated in the process - who doesn’t!? To eliminate that stress, I outsource almost all of my copywriting to the talented Estelle Lombardi.
Graphic Design
Another thing I would not consider my strength is graphic design - and that’s ok! Although I enjoy design and I’m curious to continue learning more, I found graphic design to be another time-consuming activity for me, and one that I am not the most proficient in. Instead of worrying about developing a whole new skill to support my business, I decided to outsource my graphic design (and branding) to Apple Core Digital.
INVESTING TO SPEED UP RESULTS
As the old saying goes, “time is money”. To spend the bulk of my time doing the things only I could do - strategy, planning, delivering results to clients - I invested in ways to make myself stronger in those areas, through focusing on two main aspects:
Building Systems
A lot of time in the first year of Early Riser has been invested in building systems to create efficiencies in day-to-day operations. From tracking my tasks or ideas, managing client projects, or coordinating with team members to process and organize everyone’s workflow, the investments I made allowed everyone to do the things they needed to do. Reducing this cognitive load for everyone involved (myself, clients, outsourced collaborators) also removed friction in our processes, meaning we could all shift our focus and energy to reaching our goals - ultimately speeding things up overall.
Education
Investing in education and learning is one of the surest ways to save time in the long run. Becoming more proficient in areas of running a business - from the day-to-day, to strategic, to high leverage tasks - was one of the highest priorities for me. Gaining the knowledge to master these core skills was vital to speed up results towards my goals. This year, I have focused on learning in 4 areas: Shopify, social media marketing, client operations, and business strategy. I invested by gathering knowledge from a variety of sources, including sifting through documentation and articles, reading books, listening to podcasts, watching YouTube videos, and even enrolling in a design business coaching program.
INVESTING IN MYSELF
Knowing how and where to invest in my business took some thought, planning, and trial and error. It all started by identifying my goals as a new business owner and creating a plan on how to get there. By no means is this an exhaustive list, and not every investment I made for Early Riser is discussed listed here. However, this list is what made a big impact on my first year as a business owner, and contributed largely to the pace at which I was able to grow.
If you are a designer or brand owner, have you considered strategically investing in your business to regain your time and energy? An expert web developer can help speed things up, free up your time, and maximize results towards your business goals.
Reach out via our client application or email hello@earlyriserstudio.com to see how we can grow, together!
