I started my business one gloomy day in February 2015 and it didn’t take me very long after I started to realise that I needed to invest in my business to be able to make it work for me and for my business to reach its full potential. Everybody has different ideas on what investments you should make and that’s totally fine, you need to work out what you should invest in not follow what everyone else does.
VA Course
The very first thing I invested in, only a couple of months after I started was this course with Jo. It was the best investment I made for my business and still is today. I can’t believe at the time I hesitated to sign up with Jo because it was everything I needed. Jo helped me figure out my niche, my rates, prompted me to get my website up and reviewed my site for me and she gave me amazing ideas for the future. On top of all that Jo gave me the confidence, I needed to believe in myself that I could really do this. This course is slightly different from the one I took back in 2015 but it is still just as awesome and filled with even more info than when I signed up with Jo.
Hosting Domain Name
I think this is mostly a given. It’s the number one investment you should make when you start a business. Whether it’s WordPress or Squarespace. Both I think are amazing platforms. I think it just really boils down to personal preference and usability. When I created my website, Squarespace wasn’t very popular so I never looked into it and went with WordPress as I already had some knowledge of it and picked Bluehost for my hosting which to be honest I’m not sure if I would recommend and I’ve always used GoDaddy to buy my domain names from.
Pipdig
When I first looked into setting up my website, after staring dreamily eyed at all the themes in the Pipdig shop, I email them a bunch of questions I had before I purchased a theme from them and they were awesome and helpful and while I no longer use their theme it was definitely a great investment for my business as their customer support was amazing and so helpful and setting-up the theme was so easy!
Buffer
I’m not sure if this is a weird one or not as my husband thought it was. I liked Hootsuite (still do!) but I much preferred Buffer for scheduling my social media and how easy and simple it was and the simple design of the platform. The paid version meant I could schedule till my heart was content and I still prefer it today. Although I’m always tempted by Edger.
Pinterest Workshop
I don’t think this workshop exists anymore as I can’t find the link anywhere but it was an amazing two-hour online workshop that really opened up the use of Pinterest for me.
HMRC Workshop
Provided free by HMRC. They helped me figure at all the pesky but much-needed tax stuff. I know I could have handed it over to an accountant but I want to at least understand the basics and these two workshops really helped me. Of course, I also invested in Google Apps which is now called G Suite, Email, Drive and Docs and I’ve loved using it.