When most of us start a business, we have more time than money.
We might only have a handful of clients, so there is plenty of time to go to events, have coffees, meet potential referrers, post on LinkedIn and generally tell people what we do. That is completely normal. In the early days, your time is one of the most useful things you have to invest.
The problem is that people keep trying to grow the same way long after the business has changed.
At some point, you are no longer the person with plenty of spare time and three clients. You have staff, clients, meetings, problems to solve and a business that needs you in a dozen different places. Yet you are still trying to generate every new piece of work through your own time.
That is usually where growth starts getting difficult.
The Way You Grew At The Beginning Will Eventually Stop Working
In the early days, spending time to grow the business makes perfect sense. You go to events even when you do not particularly feel like going. You have coffee with people who might refer work. You build relationships. You become your own salesperson, marketer and brand.
Eventually, though, you reach a point where there simply are not enough hours left. This is particularly common when the owner is still heavily involved in delivering services. The same person who needs to find new work is also responsible for staff, clients, invoicing, recruitment, compliance and whatever emergency appeared that morning.
When this happens, businesses often start to plateau. For a while, that can feel okay. You have enough work. The business is stable. Then eventually you realise that you are not really growing anymore. You are just holding your position.
The answer is not necessarily to work harder. Often, the answer is that you have reached the point where you need to start spending money instead of continually spending more of your own time.
You Were Always Paying For Marketing
I think it helps to understand that your early marketing was never free. You were paying for it with your time.
If you spent two hours at an event, that cost you two hours. If you drove somewhere and had coffee with a potential referral partner, that cost you time. If you spent an evening posting on LinkedIn or following up with people, you were investing something valuable into generating future work.
So when somebody says they grew their business without spending anything on marketing, that is rarely completely true. They just paid in a different currency.
As the business grows, your time becomes more valuable and more scarce. That is why your marketing investment eventually needs to change as well. Instead of asking how much more time you can find, the question becomes where you can spend money so you do not have to personally generate every opportunity.
So What Should You Spend The Money On?
This is where people can get themselves into trouble, because the answer is not simply to spend money on marketing. You still need to spend it intelligently. The question is what is most likely to give you a worthwhile return for the amount you put in.
For me, LinkedIn has always been a very strong channel. For another business, it could be something completely different. It might be Google Ads. It could be Meta advertising. It could be somebody managing LinkedIn properly, better content, or paying someone to help maintain strong referral relationships.
What matters is that the money has a job. You should be able to explain why you are spending it and what you hope will happen as a result.
A Good Website Is Not Enough On Its Own
I absolutely think businesses should have a website that represents them properly. It should be current, useful and clear about who you help and what you do. But a website by itself does not generate work.
Think of it as a noticeboard. You can build the greatest noticeboard in Australia, but if it is sitting somewhere nobody ever walks past, it will not do very much for you.
Once the website exists, you still need to get people to look at it. That might mean spending money on Google Ads. It might mean building your LinkedIn presence. It could mean SEO, referral relationships, email or another source of traffic.
If all your new business relies on you personally finding people and pointing them towards the website, you have not really built a system. You have just given yourself another job.
I Do Not Have The Money For Marketing
I hear this fairly often. Sometimes that is completely reasonable. If you have only just started and the business genuinely does not have much cash, then use your time. That is what I did. It is what many businesses do. But that cannot be the permanent answer.
I am not saying you need to spend ridiculous amounts of money. Across businesses I have run, I have spent very different percentages of revenue on marketing. In one it might have been around 5 percent. In another it was closer to 11 percent. In another I currently spend somewhere around 3 percent. There is not one magic number.
Paying for software is normal. Paying staff is normal. Paying rent is normal. Paying to generate the future work your business needs should not somehow be treated as reckless.
Spending Money Stops The Owner Becoming The Bottleneck
Being the face of your business can be incredibly effective at the beginning. People trust people. But there is a downside. Eventually the business can only grow as fast as you can personally talk to people.
If every relationship needs you, every sale needs you, every event needs you and every piece of marketing needs you, the business is not really scaling.
This is where money becomes useful. You can pay good people to help. You can pay for advertising. You can build better systems. You can create content that continues explaining what you do when you are somewhere else. You are taking work that used to rely on your personal time and turning it into something repeatable.
Spend Time First, Then Learn To Spend Money
I do not think a brand-new provider should immediately throw thousands of dollars at marketing without understanding their business. Using your time at the beginning has advantages. You learn what people actually care about. You learn how referrers speak. You learn why clients choose you.
But once you have learnt those lessons and the business is busy, you need to recognise when it is time to change how you grow. Initially, you spend time generating awareness. Eventually, you begin spending money to generate awareness. Neither is better morally. They are simply different stages of business.
The mistake is refusing to do either. If nobody knows what you do, they cannot choose you.
